It’s a sweltering July in Venice and Brunetti and Griffoni, with occasional assistance from Vianello and Signora Elettra, are investigating the last few cryptic words of a dying woman. They wind up investigating environmental crime revolving around a water sampling company, and a murder.
Plenty of pertinent observations about food, friendship, misogyny and modern life in Italy – and Venice in particular.
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.
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.
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.