Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan I always feel an overwhelming sense of inherent bias while reading classics. It comes from a place of self-doubt honestly – How is this book supposed to make me feel? What if I don’t like the popular lines? What if I don’t like the book? Am I the stupid one …
Manto: Selected Short Stories translated by Aatish Taseer
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan A name that evokes perhaps the most quintessential idea of a writer from the pre-partition era. I had never read any work by a writer from the galaxy of stars generated in the Indian subcontinent during the early 20th century. This seemed to be a good place to start. Depicting …
Dark Circles by Udayan Mukherjee
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan Time, is a relative concept. Reading this book is an experience that will make you experience this relativity. In a poignant and elegant debut novel, Udayan Mukherjee has produced a work that has without a doubt jumped straight into my favourites shelf. Dark Circles is lucidly written, with a descriptive …
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan The beauty of this book stems from something I now relate to Kafka i.e. the nonchalant acceptance of something surreal. The story begins with the transformation of an ordinary man into what most translators agree, is a “monstrous vermin” (Kafka wrote one German). However, the subtle messaging of book goes …
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan Human beings are inherently flawed, and somehow, reconciling ourselves with this simple fact is perhaps the greatest task a human ever faces. People like to hold themselves by certain ideals of perfection, and often that drives them, overrules them and takes them over. But perfection is a myth. This book …
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan A close friend warned me that I won’t enjoy this book as much as I might have, had I read it when I was a teenager. Yet, I went ahead with it, simply because I personally believe that reflecting on ideals, at any of the different stages of life (or …
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan A multitude of metaphors are deployed for describing life, but rarely do we see life being seen as a lesson in itself. In an almost Kantian manner, Tuesday’s with Morrie is a beautiful book taking on life, as an end in itself. As someone on the brink of entering my …
Adulting by Neharika Gupta
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan The story of human progress is the story of a pursuit of homogenous perfection. Conformity has always been chased as a desirable end for the mass as a whole. We’re always pushed towards conformity and uniformity, even in the face of the starkly opposite empirical evidence. Order from chaos is …
Nehru: The Invention of India by Dr. Shashi Tharoor
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan History is a cruel master. Ruthless actually. You can never be sure how future generations will view your present, or even what your past was. Hitler is probably the best example of this phenomenon. Let alone Germany, Hitler enjoyed support, both academic and otherwise across Europe. Yet, today he is …
Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Originally posted on Kitabi Karwan A perennial issue faced by academia of any kind, and economics in general, is an alleged lack of pragmatism. Laymen generally tend to be dismissive of theories, with the most common complaint being that the suggested solutions, and for that matter, the propositions themselves, are detached from ground reality. Honestly, …