TOP RECOMMENDATIONS ON FICTION

Click cover to read review

EASY READS

One of the world’s most read books. A thoroughly diabolical plot (middle aged man having physical relationship with an underage girl), disturbing yet a master piece. Reflecting perhaps our own skeletons, we tend to understand the criminal protagonist.

Will make you cry and cringe and, if you are from that larger region, feel nostalgic. Interspersed with anecdotes from Afghan society, the sub-plots carry deeply emotive themes of violence, rape, guilt, father-son relationship and redemption.

Through powerful use of allegory, the story details how in any revolution, original high ideals degenerate to tyranny and totalitarianism as the new leaders get corrupted. And how the masses, in their ignorance and stupidity, allow false leaders to be formed.

Another example of revolutionary socialists, in this case in India, turning corrupt. Enjoy the dark humour while this Man Booker prize winner takes you through the roller coaster of caste, poverty, corruption and entrepreneurship in India.

Enjoy the simple, dreamy style of the world’s most famous author as he gives a simple message: “when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

The real-life story of a black teacher assigned to a difficult, low income school with demotivated, unconcerned and semi-literate students. He wins them over by respecting them as adults, focusing on practical education and life advice, and showing he really cared.

“Love means never having to say you are sorry”. Rich guy meets poor girl and marries her against his father’s wishes. Romantic and tragic as the girl discovers she has cancer.

HEAVIER READS

A play on the brilliant but ruthless Bjorn Faulkner: his successes, his weaknesses, his aristocratic wife, and his death. The readers are then asked to decide: did his secretary-mistress kill him? In evaluating him and her, we evaluate our own value system.

Listen to this beautiful, moving tale of what happens when the Developed White meets Traditional Africa. Is no one wrong or are both wrong? One of the most balanced, objective portrayals of the confusion and conflict. Many wonder how Achebe never won the Nobel prize.

Read it for a realistic portrayal of Colombia and Latin America. Read it for the seven- generational story of Buendia family. Read it for the founding and destruction of Macondo city. Read it for the magical realism of the ghosts of the past.

The underbelly of pharmaceutical world exposed in this tale of a murdered young activist wife and his husband’s desire to find the killers.

Exiled by the communist Czech government, Kundera’s work is a masterpiece – meddling into love, fiction, communism, politics and philosophy all at once. What is destined to be when, in the backdrop of Soviet invasion, a loyal young woman hopelessly falls in love with a charming intellectual, who is also an incorrigble womanizer? Many believe the 90 year old author deserves the Nobel for this book.

Amish, an IIMC alumnus, constructs an alternate story on how Shiva The Man became Shiva The God. Stay mesmerized as the yin meets yang and mythology meets pragmatism.

This erotic, romantic bestseller chronicles the unorthodox love and sexual relationship between college graduate Ana, and business tycoon, Christian Grey. The first is the best in the Trilogy.

Arundhati, the first ‘real Indian’ to win Man Booker Prize (excluding Naipaul and Rushdie) is intelligent, courageous and original. Sad and engaging story of Ammu’s life, with her twin kids, in communist and caste conscious Kerala,  and her life after divorce.

Set in post-independence India, 19 year old Lata Mehra needs to find A Suitable Boy to get married. Will she fall for Kabir the cricketer; Haresh, the businessman or Amit, the poet? Vikram Seth became the first Indian to get a $1m advance for this mammoth book (one of the longest single volume English novel across the world!).