sorana_necula_reset

Sister of My Heart  is a novel by  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni . First published in 1999, this novel was followed in 2002 by a sequel  The Vine of Desire . The story centers on the lives of two  Indian  girls, Anju and Sudha. The girls use their own voices to narrate the story of their lives. In alternating chapters the reader closely follows the lives of Sudha and Anju through childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Although some of the characters immigrate to the United States, most of the story is set in India. Indian traditions and culture are part of the rich environment portrayed in the novel and the descriptions of Calcutta are especially vivid.  Sister of My Heart  is a story about family, friendship, and the bond between sisters. Princess in the Palace of Snakes  follows two cousins from birth until their wedding day. The sudden death of their fathers on a reckless hunt for rubies sends Anju and Sudha’s mothers into premature l...

Written by Alain de Botton as his first novel in such a beautifully poetic manner, Essays in Love documents a passionate and tender relationship between a man and a woman, which happened coincidentally and ends inevitably. Told from the man’s perspective, his philosophical stance on love for his other half Chloe paints an intricate picture of how intense love can be. He marks each part of the relationship in chronological order, each chapter as a mini philosophical essay, going into great depth about simple details of their relationship such as seducing her, saying ‘I love you’, silently arguing through ‘romantic terrorism’ and wanting to commit suicide when it’s over. This all may sound slightly obsessive – which it essentially is – but through de Botton’s flowing and softly-spoken writing style, it’s as if the novel is being whispered to you (in the least creepy way possible). The novel begins with their meeting on a flight, which sounds clichéd but it captures the surprise and co...

By the two-time winner of the Giller Prize for his novels  The Book of Secrets  and  The In-Between World of Vikram Lall Uhuru Street  is M.G. Vassanji’s stunning book of linked stories, set within the Asian community of Dar es Salaam. With delicate strokes, and with irony and humour, Vassanji brings alive the characters who live and work in the shops and tenements of Uhuru Street; among them: Roshan Mattress, so called because of her free and easy ways; a street-wise orphan fighting for survival; a Goan dressmaker who entertains her employers with local gossip; and a servant who opens up the world for the children in his charge, until he oversteps his bounds and has to leave. As the younger generation searches for a new destiny, and the older fiercely holds on to the past, Uhuru Street   resonates with the moment of moving on, of leaving the place where we have roots, knowing that things will never be the same. ...

Shan Sa has an extraordinary CV. Born in Beijing, she started writing at seven and enjoyed success as a teenage poet. At 18 she moved to Paris to study, worked for the artist Balthus and won a Goncourt with her first novel (she writes in French), a Prix Cazes for her second and another Goncourt for this, her third, which is also being filmed. At a time when Chinese women's fiction in translation tends to be auto-biographical, it is a relief to discover The Girl Who Played Go . Shan Sa's first book to be translated into English shows her to be more interested in narrative form and history than in self-exploration. A carefully wrought novel, set within the framework of the board game, go, it takes place in a small city in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1936. An unnamed Japanese soldier has been sent with his battalion to seek out the Chinese resistance movement within the region, a gateway, he believes, for the glorious death that has long been his ambition. Meanwhile, a bored...