Penguin Hamish Hamilton Books

Book review: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

The Booker-25 shortlisted THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY by Kiran Desai, Penguin/Hamish Hamilton Books, is a veritable tome (almost 700 pages) dedicated almost single- mindedly to loneliness and its eviscerating effects, how to survive it, stay afloat, not go under… or get across if one does go under. Written in a melancholy manner, the…

Book review: The Bellboy by Anees Salim

THE BELLBOY by Anees Salim. Penguin Hamish Hamilton Books. Anees Salim sets such a measured pace in unspooling the life and times of Latif the teenager, who is the bellboy of the book`s title, that the reader may well wonder where the author is going with this. That would be the regular reader; those familiar…

Book review: Victory City by Salman Rushdie

Down Hampi way Salman Rushdie the story-teller, is back with a — to quickly borrow a term made famous recently by Deepika Padukone — banger of a book, Victory City. The story details the rise and fall of Bisnaga (Vijayanagara), as narrated by its creator-midwife Pampa Kampana, the woman who Will Not Age. It`s a…

Book review: The Odd Book of Baby Names by Anees Salim

A bleak kind of hope Anees Salim`s new book is laced with equal amounts of melancholia and quirk, with the former gaining a slight edge over the latter, which will not surprise the writer`s fans one bit. The plot hinges on a slender story, that of an erstwhile ruler lying in a comatose state in…