This is a review about The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End — as it’s one story and reviewing an individual book in this series makes little sense. Science-fiction is best when it confronts big issues, when it sees us from the far-flung high-tech future, and from that distance looks at the things […]
You’d think the world has enough books from terminal cancer patients, who, in the face of death, try to give us all an urgent message that money and careers don’t matter — but only love does. And how would anyone disagree with those sentiments, taking place in hospitals and bad-news conversations. The message is always […]
This story on understanding comes in the unexpected shape a science-fiction novel — although anyone who has read Orson Scott Card’s books before would not be so surprised. It’s very different from its prequel, Ender’s Game: Speaker for the Dead is about understanding others, be it different individuals, families or even alien races — and […]
“Hunting makes you animal, but the death of an animal makes you human.” Helen Macdonald has written poetry before and it shows. She writes not just about things seen, but also things felt — intuitive thoughts and feelings we all have. MacDonald puts them down into words. She writes about taming a hard-to-handle goshawk as […]
Maybe Salter just lucked into being a great writer — but more likely it’s the inevitable result of someone who graduated from a military academy, flew fighter planes in the Korean War, dined with celebrities in Europe, and one who had the desire to write it all down. Salter was probably an even better conversationalist, […]
Folding Beijing is a simple story, yet it carries incredible depth by combing Chinese conventions within a futuristic scenario alongside a powerful message. Quarrels are made in an apartment flat, baijiu is served in a state of surveillance, chow mein alternates with autonomous cars, and a girl has to choose between romance and money. It’s […]
This book combines the stories of six Chinese, born across China in between 1985 to 1990, and follows them in their lives until 2015. At times, Ash’s writing is incredibly sharp, but his style alternates as if the blend of six into one isn’t a seamless one. The book tells through inner personas, and provides context […]
This book is a true gem, and I’m surprised it’s not more known. Written in clear language, it compares the dominant thinking structures of Westerners (e.g. US & Europe) with that of East Asians (e.g. China & Japan). It goes back to Aristoteles and Confucius, but also using ecology, economy and culture to rationalise it, […]
It is a simple story. There are no spaceships, no explosions, no frantic action, no grandeur. Just people in a broken up families. Patchett’s own life patterns are visible; she’s from a divorced family, and she’s divorced herself (albeit without children). In Commonwealth, she writes a fictional story that is simple in structure that tells […]
History books normally follow a collection of facts, carefully plotted on a chronicle timeline, devoid of detail, but DeLillo’s Libra blends facts with fiction, and the storytelling to what it meant on both the individuals as well as American society is gripping to its finest details.