Shreya's Treasures

KAFKA ON THE SHORE HARUKI MURAKAMI GENRE: MAGICAL REALISM, FANTASY, NOVEL FIRST PUBLISHED: 2002 "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution ta kes will be dif ferent for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write"                                     - H. Murakami It is easier to be bewitched by Haruki Murakami's fiction than to figure out how he accomplishes the bewitchment. His narrators tend to be a bit passive, and the stakes in many of his shaggy-dog plots remain obscure. Yet the undercurrent is nearly irresistible, and readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, more curious tha...

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS KHALED HOSSEINI  GENRE: NOVEL, FICTION FIRST PUBLISHED: 2007 “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” In his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini provides a vivid portrait of a country shattered by a series of ideological leaders and wars imposed on it by foreign and internal forces. The narrative, which spans several decades, is driven by the stories of two women, Laila and Mariam, who, despite starkly different beginnings, find themselves intimately connected and dependent upon one another. Hosseini’s women, much like the country of Afghanistan itself, appear to be propelled by the whims of outside forces, familial and societal, with little chance of influencing their own lives and futures Yet Laila and Mariam are neither passive nor helpless as they make choices and accept consequences to affect desired ends, both hopeful and tragic. This portrayal of their dreams, trials, an...