“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
Let me start with the obvious – Catch-22 is the kind of book I have never read ever before, and in all probability, will not get to read since. It is a mad, crazy, insane, hilarious, acerbic, brilliant book brought forth through [...]

There are two very worst ways to arrive at The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The first is starting the journey by thinking it to be another English Butler story. Coloured by Reginald Jeeves, Nestor, or Cadbury - one would expect stiff-upper-lip-hilarity at every turn of the page. The second is reading it [...]

“Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans—in fact, few Kansans—had ever heard of Holcomb.”
November 15, 1959 turned out to be a bizarre day in the lives of the good people of Holcomb - a small, closely knit, god-fearing town located in the west of Kansas State. Comprising principally of blue-collar, middle-class American citizens [...]

The ancient Byzantine historian Procopius wrote a book called Anecdota, more commonly known as Arcana histora (The Secret History) chronicling the scandals and court intrigues of the rule of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, who reigned in the years 525 to 565 A.D. In it, Procopius described his hatred for the Emperor and [...]

Mystic River, the brilliant and award-winning contemporary crime fiction novel by Dennis Lehane, is the tale of three Boston buddies whose lives took divergent courses after one fateful day when they were kids. Now, twenty-five years later, another deeply tragic event, have not just brought them together, but has also set them off on a collision course from which no one can hope to escape unscathed.

Not surprisingly, the most obvious theme running through David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers is conflict, however; it’s not the obvious conflict of the Iraq War as a whole. Instead, Finkel focuses on the internal conflict within the soldiers fighting the war on the ground and on the Iraqi citizens of Rustamiyah trying to find [...]

India is in the throes of massive and multi-dimensional socio-economic change. That has already – in some circles at least – become cliché. Also, a lot of people are determined to call this change unqualified progress, a clear sign that India is poised to take her ‘rightful’ position at the world’s high table soon. They [...]

 
“You don’t owe nothing to dead people”

Cormac McCarthy, one of the most revered contemporary American fiction writers, won acclaim in literary circles with books like Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses and especially his latest work The Road for which he was awarded with the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. However, one might safely state that [...]

The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, written by James M. Cain, an exponent in the hardboiled school of writing, were two of the great masterpieces in American literature, and sources for famous film noir adaptations. Both featured gripping tales of lust, murder, double crosses and betrayal, and abounded in nihilism and wry cynicism.

“Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling around”. The last words of Carl Panzram, uttered to his executioner-to-be, are a chilling insight into one of history’s most prolific serial killers. However, even more disturbing are the memoirs that he penned in prison, and handed through the bars [...]