Prasanna Raghavan

Magic Square is the debut work of Salini Vineeth.  It's not the story of highfliers but lazy bones or daydreamers or those thrown off the ambitious life trajectory in unforeseen circumstances, however, their stories inspired one another.  Author:  Salini Vineeth Type: Novella Genre: Fiction Amudha has ended up a Ph. D scholar not out a research enthusiasm, an ignored middle child bear no weight of family expectations, Dheeraj is another scholar in the same boat for six years, eldest in a family, planning to sniff out something immoral from the supervisor prof. Murthy's past to blackmail him to get his degree.  There develops a kind of chemistry between them like two crabs joining claws to crawl out of grotesque depths. A joint mathematical escaped they worked out sets Amudha out on a mystery expedition she moved to territories unknown. She meets L.V. Sreenivasan the intriguing hero who gave it the best shot of his life story together with a great piece of practical advice that

A book review of the novel, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid ,  shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker price. Exit West: ISBN:  0735212171  (ISBN13:  9780735212176 ) No of Pages: 231.  Exit West is the love story of Nadia and Saeed, but not the usual type, happening in a nameless country. Nadia is individualistic and brave and had moved out of her home before she met Saeed.  Saeed is homely and lives with his parents. Both are from the conservative family set up. They meet at Nadia's flat, where one day she initiates sex, but Saeed discourages her. He believes in having sex only after marriage, his parents had fallen in love but had sex only after they got married. Tradition beckons him.  Nadia and Saeed made plans to get married one day; Nadia isn't ready for that now.  Unfortunately, things get out of control as the militants began taking hold of their native place.  They showered bombs from helicopters killed many including Saeed's mother.   A migrant population spread into their

J.M Coetzee   is an award-winning writer who received Booker price twice, first in 1983 for his novel, 'Life and Times of Michael K' and in 1999 for 'Disgrace'. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003.  The novel Disgrace derives its inspiration from the social and political situation in the post-apartheid South Africa. The country gained independence from apartheid colonialism in 1994.  David Lurie, the protagonist in Disgrace, teaches Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, South Africa. 'A man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has to his mind, solved the problems of sex rather well', meets Soraya a prostitute every Thursday.  After Soraya stopped seeing him abruptly, he seduced a young girl Melanie Issac, his student.  His run into disgrace started when he was dismissed from the University for refusing to admit before the disciplinary committee he was wrong in his action.   ''Suffice to say that Eros entered. After that, I

We all heard it: Chethan Bhagath's One Indian Girl, broke all records in Amazon's pre-order history thirty minutes after going live on the platform beating Harry Potter and Cursed Child's Day 1.  Chethan Bhagat is a best-selling Indian author. The banker -turned author's debut novel is 'Five Point Someone', and One Indian Girl is his eighth work; previously he has written  five fiction and two non-fiction. The book is set to hit stands on first of October. What makes the current work unique according to him is that it is about females about feminism. This is what he writes in his blog on this:"I wrote on feminism because it isn't an equal world for woman, and most don't realise it. As a writer, I want to highlight issues in society that affect a lot of people. Feminism affects us all." He adds that his desire to write about females has taken a long time because to write in a 'female first person' was a 'huge challenge'.   In