Bookworm's Nook

  PARADISE Abdulrazak Gurnah “They offered me freedom as a gift. She did. Who told her she had it to offer? I know the freedom you are talking about. I had that freedom the moment I was born. When these people say you belong to me, I own you, it is like the passing of the rain, or the setting of the sun at the end of the day.”     These touching words are an excerpt from 2021 Nobel Prize Winning  'Paradise' by Tanzanian Writer Abdulrazak Gurnah. It follows around Yusuf , a Muslim teenage boy , in East Africa. He is unknowingly sent with his 'Uncle Aziz' , just to know later that he has been sold to him by his parents for money and a temporary escape from poverty. Life isn't easy. He has to travel long to reach his destination. Even after reaching their life isn't easy. It is the story of coming of age of Yusuf against the backdrop of an Africa of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition. The book also ends with a creeping in of corruption and colonialism...

  THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS  A Stirring Masterpiece of Memory, Love, and Loss Arundhati Roy "D’you know what happens when you hurt people?" Ammu said. "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less." These hauntingly beautiful lines from Arundhati Roy’s 1997 Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things echo the emotional undercurrents that define the story — raw, unflinching, and heartbreakingly human. Set in Ayemenem, a village in Kottayam, Kerala, the novel intricately weaves the fragmented lives of fraternal twins Estha and Rahel. Branded the "two-egg twins," their seemingly innocent world begins to unravel with the arrival of their beloved Anglo-Indian cousin, Sophie Mol — "the Sophie Mol who smells of cologne, whom everyone adores, even Ammu, their mother." But beneath the surface of familial affection and cultural pride lies the unyielding grip of societal norms...