I loved Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and have vivid memories of devouring it on a wet afternoon in a guest house in northern Laos many moons ago.
Twenty years later, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is equally wonderful, albeit a long novel with difficult themes: Insurgency in Kashmir, Indian Army torture and murder, the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, ethnic and religious conflicts between Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities, the extremes of poverty and wealth.
But there’s plenty of love and joy in there too, revolving around the outcast communities of Old Delhi.
Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata (Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
A very short novel (novella?) about a not-so-young woman working in one of Tokyo’s many convenience stores.
She’s very literal and has never seen the world “as normal people do”. Working in the shop, with its rules, routines and procedures suits her very well. So well that she’s been there 18 years.
And then the arrival of a not-so-compliant co-worker brings changes, both good and bad, depending on your perspective.
The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal – Dervla Murphy
I struggle with Dervla Murphy* but I love the places she visited decades ago. In The Waiting Land, it’s Nepal, primarily the Tibetan Refugee Camp in Pokhara and the capital, Kathmandu, in 1965.
* in this case: “Tiblets”, “Tibland” and thinking she’s better than most other westerners in Nepal.
A wonderful first hand account of the first ascent of Everest in 1953, when Jan Morris (then James) accompanied Sir John Hunt’s team of mountaineers drawn from across the Empire as The Times’ official correspondent.
Part of what makes this a fascinating period of history is that, as John Keay concludes, none of these explorations would feasible today given the borders and accompanying tensions between India, Pakistan and China. I’d love to be able to trek from Leh to Yarkand…..
