Purge by Sofi Oksanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very rarely do I find a book that compels me to spend an entire day in bed, reading.
Purge is one such book, which may be a good 370 something pages long but which captured my interest entirely.
It's like a movie, in fact, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, which unfolds scene by scene, each with a quirky title on top.
More engrossing, however, is the storlyline: A victim of sex-trafficking runs away to find herself at the door of an old woman, who has been instrumental in shaping the course of not just her life but that of her grandmother and her mother.
What unfolds is a bittersweet saga of unrequited love, jealously and obsession. I still don't know whether to love or hate Aliide! Is her love for Hans and her actions towards Ingel pure evil? Or is she the new Heathcliffe?
Truly one of the darkest yet beautiful novels I have ever stumbled upon.

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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are books, whose very size, intimidates you, and yet, you do have to read it, because your favourite celebrity ever (for me that was Daniel Radcliffe) has read it as early as when he was 16. So, to do away with that feeling of incompetence, you pick up a book like this one and start reading it.

Crime and Punishment, where do I even start? It's long, yes, it seems to go on forever, true; but it is ONE hell of a book you simply can't keep down. While reading it, you're simply not you! You're Raskolnikov, who is full of bitter madness towards a world he sees crumbling before his eyes, full of exploitation, misery and despair. You're Sonia, who is forced to prostitute herself to feed her family and whose only consolation is the Bible. You're the crazy, funny, drunk Razumikhin who finds it easy to fall in love and who suspects nothing.

The best part of the book is how Dostoyevsky is this completely different person who is narrating the story to you and as he does, he has little comments on his own characters and the incidents in the novel, something, that makes you feel he doesn't really always side up with what his characters are doing.

What I loved and what haunts me still about the book is its narration. Seriously, there's nothing MUCH in the story itself! It's just how it has been told. This book, above all others I have ever read, made me feel how powerful and wonderful almost ANYTHING can sound if the narration is right and how there's philosophy and poetry hidden in the most mundane and day to day activities of human life, music hidden in misery and a sweet artistic charm in sadness, too.

A book to die for, Crime and Punishment is something I will HIGHLY recommend!

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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear Mr Daniel Radcliffe,

I do realise that the possibility of you coming across this review is VERY, VERY slim but if by some serendipitous twist of fate, you ever do, know that a person, miles away from you, is eternally indebted to you for this book and that she has an entire bookshelf that contains books you recommended her, not personally, but through newsletters that your secretary sent as replies to her 'Daddy-Long Legs' like letters-something she wrote you as a teenager.

So, for all those books but particularly this, thank you. Thank you SO VERY much! The reader in her and the blogger she has become because of book reviews, owes a LOT to you. Had it not been for you, this girl would have never stumbled across such a beautiful satire, such a haunting novel that makes one believe that because there's evil, there's also good, because there's darkness, there's also light.

True, the book isn't perfect because the true Master, Bulgakov, died before he could complete it. True, there are gaps, flaws but that doesn't stop the book from being truly mesmerising!

If ever I get a chance to tell you, in person, what all I felt while reading this book, the countless hours of sleepless nights I spent reading this and sympathising even with Satan and Pontius Pilate despite their evilness! Yes, the chances are slim, Mr Radcliffe, I do realise that, but then, did Pontius Pilate ever expect to suffer so much after executing Ha-Nostri? Did Margarita ever expect to go to the Satan's Ball? Did the Master ever expect bliss? And if I go by the concept of ad absurdum that this novel is based on, isn't it possible you'd read this letter of mine at least because you haven't read any other?


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First Love by Ivan Turgenev
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First Love was my first Turgenev novel ever, and it wasn't just any other translation either but a pretty, Progress Publishers at that! Somehow, I wasn't as impressed as I expected to be. It could have been better, much better, though it did start off as a really promising story.

We come across a group of friends who start talking about their first loves when the narration changes and steps into first person, where this man recounts the story of his first love with a bankrupt minor royalty from the family of the gradually falling Russian aristocrats before the Revolution. The story unfolds gradually, describing aptly the pains and agitations of teenage infatuation, some of which, I could personally relate to, some which made the narrator sound like Young Werther.

It then proceeds to a very sound twist in the end, something so powerful it could have changed the course of the entire story but sadly, it doesn't and the story ends rather abruptly despite its extreme realism. I can't pinpoint what failed for me in this story. It could be the annoyingly repetitive description in the beginning that became painfully sparse in the end or just the fact that Turgenev sounded pretty bored with it in the end himself. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story for its uniqueness and the poetic merit (even if it was a little too much in places!) Can be read!

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Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bought in Brighton on a friend's insistence and read under the sultry sun of Sussex, amidst the shouts of, "Clear up your loose! " and "There is a pot here with burnt bone in it! " this book kept yours truly company on her first excavation in between breaks and on the nights when no one played Ring of Fire or watched Tarantino movies!

Jumping straight to the review, Eugene Onegin is a the story of a proud, arrogant town man, who looks down on everything in the country where he moves to, including the affections of the simple and passionate, Tatyana. The consequences of this are disastrous and not just for the poor young girl. I will not give out any spoilers but I will tell you this: just when you think that Tatyana is stupid, vulnerable and pathetic, she rises like a phoenix and displays remarkable sense of character.

Written in verse, Eugene Onegin is entertaining with insights into Pushkin's own head. In fact, there are passages which give you the feeling that you are talking to Pushkin directly and for its originality and for many other things that I cannot really explain, this book is, sort of, my favourite.

Worth reading? Yes! And if you adore Vikram Seth as much as I do, here is another SPLENDID reason for you to read it: This book inspired him to write The Golden Gate.

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Animal Farm by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am sure I wouldn't have touched Animal Farm if it hadn't been for Dr H. Gill's lectures, despite the fact that it had been lying around in my bookshelf with other books that my Uncle had given me for my birthday. Yes, those 'illegally' attended lectures, (thanks to Gayatri's insistence) introduced me to Orwell and his masterpiece which made me appreciate the course and impact of the Russian Revolution as well as the power of storytelling like never before.

I don't have much to say about this book for the fear of sounding very jargonish and can't say if you'll enjoy it just as much as I did if you don't attend lectures on Orwell with a teacher as brilliant as Dr Gill or if you're not a sucker of history like I am. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. However, I'm definitely thrusting it in the hands of people who ask me for a good recommendation!

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A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mikhail Bulgakov is now officially one of my favourite authors! Seriously! This man can make you read a book full of all the disgusting details of an amputation, childbirth, even syphilis without making you go, "Eew! I need to puke!"

Written with wit, humour and that rare trait that helps a reader "walk in the the character's shoes," this book is the result of absolute genius in the art of story telling! I now have a new found respect and sympathy for all those who take up the noble job of medicine. A MUST READ for everyone!

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A Dog's Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Dog's Heart is probably one of the most powerful satires ever written. You just can't classify this book into a particular genre because it is magical realism combined with political satire, science fiction and speculative fiction.

The story has shifting narrative and starts from the point of view of a stray dog who has been kicked, shooed, scalded by hot water and stoned but is later on is taken in by a crazy doctor who transplants a human heart into its body. The result is a narcissist, slovenly creature who is neither a man nor a dog and who becomes a pain in the neck for the poor doctor.

A biting satire on how the Soviet Communist regime attempted to radically transform mankind, A Dog's Heart laughs at the very ideas of the Communist Revolution and on Stalin through this book. So, if you adore the Russians, are very taken by the way things were before and after the revolution and want to read something that isn't really Soviet propaganda, A Dog's Heart is your book.

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Revolutionising Russia

Vera, Or, the Nihilists: A Drama in a Prologue and Four Acts by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It's a tragedy that one of the best Wildean Tragedy, 'Vera, or the Nihilists', isn't a we known play at all! We go about praising other plays by him and know that he can write comedies like 'The Importance of Being Earnest' and social satires like'A Woman of No Importance' but Wilde is the last person a reader can associate with tragedies, which is a shame indeed because 'Vera, or the Nihilists' happens to be one of the finest tragedies that I have ever come across. In fact, in my opinion, it is even better than Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan' because unlike Joan, Vera's sense of patriotism is not exactly guided by the Divine Word. It is much more practical and has a clear motive.

The only place where I'd dock off stars from this play is that it is not entirely faithful to history and historical facts. In fact, I recommend you do some digging on Czar Alexander II first. Or maybe after because it really spoils the play's romance!



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Ryabtsev's Russia

Kostya Ryabtsev's Diary: Scenes of School Life, September 1923-June 1924 by N. Ognev

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Every time I look at my tattered, silverfish infested, secondhand Kostya Ryabtsev's Diary (which, going by its condition, looks like it once belonged to someone from the Weasley Family) I am reminded of 'The Shadow of the Wind' and the whole idea about how the book chooses the reader. This is completely true because Kostya, quite literally, adopted me.
There I was, with my two cousins, moving stack after stack of dirty, dusty books in a second hand book shop, when this small, hardbound book fell on my head leaving me with more than swear-words! I bought this little rascal for just 40 bucks, hardly realising that not only was this book extremely rare, but it had also survived Nazi book burning and N.Ognev , the forgotten author of this brilliant book, was someone the Soviet Russians named their bravery awards after! For me, it was nothing more than a Soviet book, then. However, it was while listing it on Goodreads, that my friend, Navdeep and I found out a little more about Kostya and the man who wrote his Diary.

I wonder how many people have actually read this book or have a copy of it lying somewhere in the dusty corners of their houses. However, if you can find this book, go get it! Having read it, I will describe this book as the forerunner of all epistolary teenage novels like Adrian Mole, Abby Hayes and the like, and cannot stop loving Kostya despite the fact that he has very strong political views, is hardly a feminist and to quite an extent, a propagandist because despite all his faults, he's witty, humorous and in every way, a normal, adolescent boy who is naughty, sexually conscious and deeply emotional. Of course, the story of Kostya and his friends will always remain incomplete unless I get extremely lucky once again and its sequel decides to adopt me, too in some other secondhand bookshop, but the story will remain special to me for a lot of reasons like the fact that Ognev is my first Russian author (if I don't count the short stories). However,what makes the book even more special is that N. Ognev happens to be a pseudonym of Mikhail Gregorovich (something that will ring a bell in every Potterhead!)



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