Arvind Adiga

Upamanyu Chatterjee

Amit Chowdhury

Anita Desai

Kiran Desai

Chitra Banerjee Devkumari

EM Forster

Amitav Ghosh

Raj Kamal Jha

Sudha Kaul

Jhumpa Lahiri

Amulya Malladi

Rohinton Mistry

V.S Naipaul

Monica Pradhan

Gregory D. Roberts

Arundhati Roy

Salman Rushdie

Paul scott

Vikas Swarup

Vikram Seth

Shashi Tharoor

The lot: in words by Michael Leunig
Diary of a bad year by J. M Coetzee
I thought I would read a book that was witty, funny, and delight, just like his cartoon. But it turns out The Lot by Michael Leunig is more than I expected.

Yes, it is witty, but not so funny. It is, on the contrary, very serious. He strongly criticises hypocrisy and mediocrity. He sees enough darkness in human being and refuses to humour about it.
Reading Leunig’s book I think immediately of Coetzee and his book ‘Diary of a bad year’. It is a rare format of a book as it has two parts in it. The first part printed on the top half of the book is non fiction but the bottom half is a fiction. In that book Coetzee, like Leunig speak freely on wide range of issues.
Coetzee tells a story in his book as one day he lectured in the national library and talked about the police could raid any families under the security reasons in 1960s . So he mentioned it was not new that we used this very same excuse again today. The following week, someone posted a letter to the Australian newspaper and asked Coetzee to be sent back to Africa, to Zimbabwe.
I wonder what our beloved patriotists would think about ‘The lot’. Maybe it is OK for an Australia born to be critical but not for an African writer to have a say, even a writer has won the Nobel prize and lives in Australia?

There are couple of reviews on each book that give us glimpse of what are both books about.

Reviews from Penguin Book Australia on ‘The Lot’

Musings from a truly original thinker on everything under the sun and many things over the moon.
There are few aspects of existence to which Michael Leunig has not turned his renaissance mind, as a bemused and committed member of the human plight. From his cartoonist’s sensibilities comes a peculiar journalism made of parable, memoir and soliloquy, on subjects ranging from the sublime to the subhuman.
From the fragile ecosystem of the spirit to the brutalisation of the modern world. From the joy of primal epiphanies to the wretchedness of the violence we unwittingly commit against each other and our deeper selves each day.
To hypocrisy and dispair in the political order. Military madness and the media. To violins, artists and newborn facials. The value of the mundane. Emotional mysteries and the night sky. Light and darkness in the national character. The wisdom of the innocent. The sadness of the brain-ridden. Humanity’s redeeming pathos and our exquisite inseparabilitiy from the natural world. . . The lot.
Even in the smallest, simplest things, Leunig finds the eternal key. And no matter how confronting the topic, he awakens and upholds the funny side. The uplifting side. The side you’d forgotten about – or didn’t realise was there.
Library Journal Review on ‘Diary of a bad year’
Library Journal Review: Señor C, an aging and ailing writer in Australia, has been asked by his publisher to contribute political essays to a book called Strong Opinions . Having become infatuated with Anya, a beautiful young woman who lives in his apartment building, he hires her to type his manuscript. While Señor C is writing his essays on politics and morality, a morality tale of a different sort is playing out in his apartment, as the young woman’s boyfriend tries to tap into the old writer’s online bank account. The result reads like a literary hybrid of fiction and nonfiction, with each page alternating between Señor C’s observations for Strong Opinions and dialog among him, Anya, and her boyfriend, Alan. As Anya remarks, we’ve all got opinions, but if you tell a story at least people will shut up and listen to you. Nobel prize winner Coetzee’s thought-provoking and cerebral novel is recommended for academic and larger public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/07.]—Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, RI –Leslie Patterson (Reviewed October 1, 2007) (Library Journal, vol 132, issue 16, p56)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

I suggest this book to everyone because of its humanity and inspiration. People of Guernsey Islands, showed their true resilence and endurence during the WWII which destroyed so many human souls.

It is easy to read but it is inspiring, once you start, you don’t want to put it down. The author was a librarian and died before to see her book published. I’m usually not a fiction fan but I loved this book.

Below are couple of reviews from the others. More reviews can be found from ‘NoveList’ on www.nswnet.net
Winding up her book tour promoting her collection of lighthearted wartime newspaper columns, Juliet Ashton casts about for a more serious project. Opportunity comes in the form of a letter she receives from Mr. Dawsey Adams, who happens to possess a book that Julia once owned. Adams is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—no ordinary book club. Rather, it was formed as a ruse and became a way for people to get together without raising the suspicions of Guernsey’s Nazi occupiers. Written in the form of letters (a lost art), this novel by an aunt-and-niece team has loads of charm, especially as long as Juliet is still in London corresponding with the society members. Some of the air goes out of the book when she gets to Guernsey; the humorous tone doesn’t quite mesh with what the islanders suffered. But readers should enjoy this literary soufflé for the most part, and curiosity about the German occupation of the British Channel Islands will be piqued. — Quinn, Mary Ellen (Reviewed 07-01-2008) (Booklist, vol 104, number 21, p34)
Publishers Weekly Review: The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume “Izzy Bickerstaff”) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet’s name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with their stories, the book’s epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet’s quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life—as will readers. (Aug.) –Staff (Reviewed April 21, 2008) (Publishers Weekly, vol 255, issue 16, p30)

Strange museums : a journey through Poland by Fiona McGregor
Raw ,irreverent and unnervingly original, this book is a blurring of genres. The reader gets to enjoy a travel memoir, a history of Poland and commentary on modern Poland.

Fiona McGregor is an Australian artist and writer with a sharp eye for detail and characters. She took a trip to Poland in 2006 as part of a performance duo called senVoodoo. They were invited to perform at a number of festivals throughout Poland, which took her off the usual tourist track. Her writing style is gritty and political. She is a performance artist and her style reflects her views of the world which is quite avant garde.

This travel memoir is a journey through the interior world, rather than a touristy description of towns, scenery, places to stay etc. Yet this kind of travel writing is very rewarding because the reader gains insights into the Poland that the average tourist never gets to see.

In Poland there is a large and appreciative audience for live performance art. McGregor finds her audiences sophisticated and accepting of artistic expression. Apparently Communist Poland was a fruitful environment for artists and performance artists. She visits Museums, galleries and describes her surprise at the quality and variety of Polish artistic culture. She also observes that the Polish art is free from self-censorship, which isn’t always the case in all societies, even open ones like Australia.

A lovely chapter in her novel that I enjoyed a lot is devoted to the town of Lublin, which is the setting for the novels of Isaac B. Singer. Who interesting enough was immensely popular during the communist period in Poland’s history. She puts this down to the “magical realism and rich vein of morality inherent in his novels”. Apparently his novels really struck a chord with people in Poland during the austre Communist period. You can find Singer’s novel’s at the library and I recommend you try “The Slave” if you want to give one a go.

This book is a great read if you like travel writing with a twist. You will sit in on a history lesson without realising it. Poland has been at the centre of historical and political storms for most of its history, for example invasions, the holocaust, communism, you will marvel at the resilience of it’s people.

At the end of the book you will have learnt a lot about the history of Poland and it’s people, and gain insights into how young Poles view the capitalist world and relate to their religion in all it’s complexity.

If you come along on this journey with an open mind, if you are interested in contemporary and avant- garde art you will enjoy the ride. The quality of McGregor’s writing and intellect makes this travel memoir a treat to read.

The invention of solitude by Paul Auster is my pick for this week. This book includes two parts, ‘Portrait of an invisible man’ and ‘The book of memory’.

The 1st part is author’s personal feeling touched by his father’s death. Auster couldn’t remember what his father was like because he didn’t have much emotional connection with his father. The father made himself absent for most of his own son’s emotional life. Then after breaking out from his marriage, the father consciously or subconsciously made himself invisible. It seems only after his father’s death that the author could feel a connection with his father. After the funeral Auster learnt more about his father by jogging his memories and feelings. Revealing a very lonely man – an almost invisible man’s life, the author, meanwhile, uncovers a family tragedy – a shocking murder case.
In the second part of the book, the author places his position in a son as well as a father by changing the narration from ‘I’ to the third person – A. ‘A’ is not a fictional character, but probably more true of Paul Auster himself. The memories flow consciously. Sometimes I felt I was reading Proust. But the language is vivid, and touching. The author always has a unique language style, such as short sentences, precision, and tranquillity. Yet, it’s everyone’s invention of solitude that exits when one is not understood by others.
In this part, memories and stories about the a dying grandfather and about the son of A are all set as background context; it is the solitude that A tries to feel, to sense, to break, and by doing so, find meaning of this life. Sensational stories are written by flow of memories and images, intrigued by death of a father, and also by painful feeling of solitude. That solitude is an image written by the author, “Memory as a room, as a body, as a skull, as a skull that encloses the room in which a body sits. As in the image: ‘a man sat alone in his room.’ ”
Paul Auster is a writer defined by critics as a postmodernist. He often mixes stories from one to another to further complicate characters. Therefore his characters are usually eccentric, some without clear identities. He uses his own name to create a character in a fictional book and uses the same names again and again in different fiction books. The settings change, the characters change, but the names are same. Does it mean that a person’s name means nothing or is merely a symbol? He writes stories within stories in which one can hardly anticipate what will happen. In Auster’s novels storylines are unpredictable. Most of his fictional works end abruptly, with no certain conclusion – it is as if a man’s life that does not necessary has a conclusion.
However all his works truly reflect the author’s thinking of the world and life itself. Everything is connected and life is defined by chain of contigent events. Every story happens with a reason, and every story, it doesn’t matter how trivial, has consequence.
The library has ‘The invention of solitude’ in HSC collection.