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Showing posts from May, 2023

Em : Kim Thúy

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  While I was reading Kim’s Em [2020], I was finding a sheer similarity between divided Vietnamese and Bengalese and other likely deadly fractured lands and men all over the world as a result of rapturous colonialism in the modern period. Surprisingly, the time period was also, coincidentally, the same from early fifties to late sixties when both Vietnam and united Pakistan were going through the same struggle and sufferings in quest of independence from the chronic oppression. [DESIRES]   “Certainly, bullets kill, but so, perhaps, does desire.” I can’t help but accept it as a truism. Yes! It is our darkest desire that brings all the evil over the world.   [COOLIES]   I didn't read any other literature based on India -China's indentured labor in European and Latin American countries. History refuses to accept the truth about indentured labor but it was indirectly like African slavery.   Tâm, Alexandre, and Mai are examples of Hegelian historical and Marxist dialecti

Whale : Cheon Myeong-Kwan

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  Cheon' Whale is one of the finest novels I have read in decades. It will be classics in everywhere everytime. Even readers from the Bronze age would be delighted to have it inscribed on stones to read. At the first few pages, Chunhui’s narrative rose up rapidly like her heavyweight. I have a distaste when the narrative flows like a super cyclone. Readers take a long leap from plot A to B without having a breathing space. But it turns surprisingly into the opposite direction to pull my attention when Cyanide enters with her ‘sweeping’ life and ‘piling’ death and I sails with admirable prose, salacious imagery and narrative styles of Korean Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s Whale [2023]. I haven't read novels for many years, with the narrative style of folk tales where rumors, myths, legends, superstition, prophecy and dissimilarity rule over the characters and the stories. Like the thugs and one-eyed woman, I felt a heavy urge to know where did the old crone hide her fortunes? I felt the ne

Still Born : Guadalupe Nettel

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  Guadalupe Nettel's mothers in Still Born are more inclusive and unflinching than Eva Baltasar's mothers in Boulder. I am so much touched by the novel which is dealt with familial relationship  with delicate and  elegant. PART-ONE   I. Not being a mother is not a choice in our society.   II. If any one wishes to do so like other not-to-list then one be answerable.   III. If we want to follow our mind we must prepare our body for that. ( Laura's ovary removal surgery )   IV. Alina's decision to take motherhood as her profession brings an ideological rift with Laura.   V. Alina's conception gives a joy for Laura. We cannot be apart when our beloved has a bliss of life.   VI. The most parts of "violence begets violence" are farmed in the families. Child rearing consumes the most parts of a life in suffering and sacrifice.   VII."There are beings without whom we simply cannot conceive of ourselves in this world." on Alina's part in

The Gospel According to the New World : Maryse Condé

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Gospel is the first novel of Maryse Condé I have read ever. And I am blown out from this unequal world but come back to read her rest of the books.  Bulgarian Gospodinov's Time Shelter sends the present times to the past whereas Guadeloupean Maryse's Gospel brings the past times to the present.  Gondé has assembled the brief narrative of the world in this  new kind of novel, as daring and dearing as I have been searching for. Richard Philcox's creative collaboration with Maryse Condé as translator and partner is one of the  finest literary pairs in the history of literature. It will require a hack of time to write a complete review so I have just written my first impression on each chapter of the Gospel. 1. Less The history of love marriage and the culture of their validation are all under the pitch-black doubt. 2. Diversity  The history of homogeneities and the cultures of sapiens are all constructed and a mere evolution in essence. 3.Words It's a word that forms our t

Boulder : Eva Baltasar

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    1]  "If anyone talks to me about happiness, I swear to God I’ll break their face." I have got stonned as soon as I read this sentence and felt the deeper and inner connotation of each word. When someone thinks and tells oneself such bold words, other can just not have the strength to throw back to counter them. 2] "Five years pass." The narrative styles are so brief and measured. The choice and structure of dictions are fairly precise and poetic. The plots' paces are calculative and arranged like gridle streets. "My love doesn’t leave with Samsa" The demonstrative and poetical  moods and meanings of every sentence are so strong and subtle that I got a sense of novelty in the fiction. 3] Pregnancy in women is a miracle. I am always being a very sensitive about it since I have to take care of the pregnant women in family especially to care about their diet and medicine. Even when it comes to the labor day, I was the sole man who had to attend the who

Time Shelter : Georgi Gospodinov

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  How can we be already so sure that all things are created at once? What if time was in its teenage years and the world was born then. What if time and space are not parallel like body and mind some think of. Starting reading Time Shelter immediately after finishing Hitchcock's spellbound has really drained me into the deep pod of psychoanalysis. Do the psychiatrists really take shelter into patients’ life as Constance took into Ballantyne’s life? Like Gustine is taking in the novel. (2)   It's a series of surprises as I came to know Dr. Alzheimer, as of Ballantyne, the imposter of Dr. Edwardes was suffering from amnesia. Will the film be at the crossroads of the themes of memory and time with the novel at last? Let's see what comes next.    "When does every day become history?" (6)   As Ishmael, I also believe when I know my today, I know my history. Similarly, when I know Auden's history on 1st September 1939, I know his today. I think my post

Spellbound : Alfred Hitchcock

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I was willing to start Hitchcock with either Psycho [1960] or Birds [1963]. Nonetheless, like Godard’s Contempt [1963], I have begun with Hitchcock’s Spellbound [1945], again for the sake of Cannes Classics 2023.   Everyone says Hitchcock is a master of suspense. My first experience with Hitchcockian thrilling and suspense is quite disappointing as per my great expectation.   The method of therapeutic practices of mental sufferings and personality disorders through Freudian psychoanalysis are exercised in the movie with philosophical and aesthetic touches. But it disheartens me to keep the fair balance between cinematic narrative structures and literary worthiness.   Two things have just imprinted the finest impressions on my mind. First the dream sequences, designed by  Salvador Dalí , especially where Ballantyne [ Gregory Peck ] was running away down to the hill; as a tool of  curing amnesia. The composition and the motion are the iconic one to me. The other thing is the broad applic