Category: History

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‘Night’ Book Review

 

[easyreview cat1title=”Quick Rating” cat1detail=”A haunting tribute to the power and beauty of the human spirit. ” cat1rating=”5.0″]


Night is Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical account of holocaust survival. Summon your courage and brace yourself emotionally for the coming onslaught of cruelty inflicted by Hitler on European Jews through an incredibly dark moment in human history.

The first thing that struck me was the purity of autobiographical account being told by Eliezer, a 14-year old Jewish boy living in Transylvanian town of Sighet. As the war raged and the Nazi atrocities mounted, the Jews in that town lived ignorantly contented lives – optimistic that war would soon be over and with a feeling of blissful insulation from its terrors.

Elie Wiesel’s language is plain, devoid of embellishment and his voice throughout the book is matter-of-fact. There is no colorful language to make the pungent odors or the heat emanating from the crematoriums of Auschwitz any more real. His retelling is haunting nonetheless.

This memoir of the daily fight for survival, the personal inner battles to preserve compassion, conscience and religion is a hopeful one. It is no surprise that the author, Elie Wiesel, went on to win the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. The power and beauty of human spirit in the face of the dehumanizing brutality of a monstrous regime is deeply inspiring.

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‘The Good Earth’ Book Review

An worthwhile foray into the agrarian world of pre-Revolution China”

Published in 1931, “The Good Earth” is the first in “The House of Earth” trilogy. The book was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1932, and its author, Pearl S. Buck went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This is the beautifully written story of Wang Lung, a Chinese farmer with a deep and enduring love for his land. The story spans his lifetime from young adulthood until his old age near his death. The setting is rural pre-Revolution China. The language is simple and dispassionate. The characters are flawed but richly presented. The themes are universal, timeless and filled with irony. It is a story of the passions that drive all human beings to achievement and often to tragedy and destruction. The author takes us on an emotional journey of ambition, survival, the attainment of wealth, self-sacrifice, family, the abandonment of traditional values and of lust.

The contrast between modern Western culture and the Chinese agrarian culture at that time is striking, and I perceived that the story contained a faint thread of disdain for that society’s treatment of women. I found the author’s subtle superiority slightly unsettling. I thoroughly enjoyed the book but found that while the author presents the characters and customs with affection, she remains firmly an outsider with a voice tainted, almost imperceptibly, common to Western writers who find themselves immersed in an alien culture.

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‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ Book Review

A masterpiece. Alexandre Dumas was a genius.

Published in 1846 as a serial novel, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ is truly an epic tale – 117 chapters and 1,200 pages long. Translated from the original French, and set primarily in post-Napoleonic France, it tells the story of Edmond Dantes.

We witness Edmond’s transformation from wide-eyed 19-year old sailor, about to become captain of his own ship and marry beautiful Mercedes, the girl of his dreams, to a prisoner, a victim of treachery forgotten in a dungeons of the infamous Chateau d’If, to one of the most enigmatic and multi-layered characters ever written – fabulously wealthy, awesomely powerful and patiently bent on the cleverest, darkest revenge.

Spanning the course of 24 years, this is a saga so rich, so intricate and so enveloping, it makes movies’ attempts to capture masterpieces in the space of a few hours laughable. The reader is mesmerized from the very first chapter. We are sickened by the plots of Edmond’s jealous friends and colleagues plotting his demise. We sense the imminent danger that our guilelessly lovable protagonist is in, but we read on, because we know things will not end well for those who have done wrong as they are steered unknowingly along the inexorable course of fate. With brilliantly rich characters and surprisingly interconnected events, the masterful plot develops seamlessly and with great eloquence and beauty.

Dumas weaves a timelessly brilliant work that captures every facet of human nature and life; it is a story of intrigue, greed and revenge, but also of generosity and determination, self-examination and forgiveness, restoration, redemption and love.