Uncle Tom is a wonderful sketch for two reasons;The way Tom liberates his soul from his body, and lets them know they can maul and mutilate his body, but they cannot touch his soul, And then the way he refuses to stoop down to wickedness and incurs the wrath of his master Simon Legree. The…
Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ must have been a fascinating triumph when it was first published. The misery and the pathos of the situation, the general human predicament, the condemnation that always haunts the damned, the unflinching belief of one man in love and sacrifice, and the unswerving devotion of one man towards his duty are…
From the novels written by Indian writers, I have planned a small detour to desribe three novels which I had the opportunity of reading. All the three novels are from the East and each of them has valuable insights into the art of writing fiction. Red Sorghum Red Sorghum is an intense novel from China…
E.M.Forster’s novel ‘A Passage to India’ narrates the social and political condition of the days of the British Raj and the relation between the colonial masters and their Indian subjects. The relationship was strained and fragile. The novel presents the fractious and mistrustful sentiment that permeated this unequal relation and even gestures or attitudes which…
The language of childhood is Universal. Is there any writer who does not wish to go back to those happy, innocent days when life was an endless discovery spent in the company of friends. R.K.Narayan’s Swami or Chami as he is affectionately called by his Grandmother in the TV series ‘Malgudi Days’ beautifully recreated by…
Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfel Hall is unlike any novel that I have read so far. Not getting into the details of the story which was considered far too liberal or immoral for those times, I shall touch upon the power of the novel for presenting two remarkable characters in Mr. Arthur Huntingdon and…
Mark Twain’s ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ is a romantic tale of mistaken identity and how the situation of the Prince, who is identical in appearance to the pauper, becomes miserable after the exchange. His romantic notion of freedom and liberty from the artifice and monotony of his existence turns out to be an irreversible…
Reading a novel can be a weighty matter especially when the novelist looks at the more serious side of life. Expecting an instance of light hearted fun and comedy in a novel like ‘The Rainbow’ would be a misjudgment since the novel’s energy and force are vital to propel the characters ahead in a spiritual…
The digression on the length of a novel may be continued for a few more pages, to support my argument that it is not the length that merits the reading of a novel more than once. J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ is a short novel but requires a lot of reader engagement because of…
I had no idea about this novel. I should have read it long ago but it has been reserved for me after I have read the other Bronte novels; Villette, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte. This is my first novel of Anne Bronte and I have ‘The Tenant of…