Book Links

There has been a hiatus on this blog as far as books are concerned. Part of the reason is the great financial crisis that has engulfed the world capitalist system, a phenomenon that vindicated my youthful reading of Marx and communist thinkers and has consequently occupied most of the space here. Another is that immersed in another project, I have been relatively away from reading. The only book that I have been able to spend some time on is Ivan Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’ (correct translation: ‘Fathers and Children’). This time it is not so much as an unabashed reader, but as one trying to understand the narrative structure of the novel. Probably a short post on some of the key observations will follow. As of now, here are a few book related links to stuff I have been surfing.

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Iceland is in the news for the wrong reasons- for the country’s total economic collapse. But Iceland is also the home to a very rich Nordic tradition in story telling, and the most famous name that comes to mind is that of Halldor Laxess, who wrote 51 novels in his lifetime, very few of them available in English. This is a review of one of his recently translated novels- the Great Weaver from Kashmir.

‘Reading in Spanish’ is a new blog focussed on Latin American literature. This post on the Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli introduces her book ‘Waslala’, a search for utopia. I recently had the chance to watch an interview with Belli though haven’t read her as yet.

Roberto Bolano’s long awaited work, the English translation of his magnum opus 2666 is finally available. Despite being a long time admirer of the Chile born novelist, I am unlikely to get to it till end of this year. Part of the reason is its length since it runs into 900 pages. Its publication was preceded by a slew of reviews in selected blogs. NYT has a review this week, though I haven’t read it (nor do I plan to till I have read the tome myself!).

Unrelated to books, this is a post on the Punjabi folk singer Tufail Niazi. I must admit that I had not even heard of the great singer from West Punjab and listening particularly to his renditions of sufi qalam has been an invigorating, even if belated, revelation.

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