Tag: historical fiction

Reading Catch-22 was sort of like watching a brilliantly shining coin flipping through a majestic parabola in slow motion, with one side representing laugh-out-loud comedy and the other an intense exploration of the terrors of war, making its way to the ground with the weight of someone's fate resting on whichever side it falls on.

Midnight's Children is a brilliant and complex novel. Told by an unreliable, at times annoying, but endlessly fascinating narrator Saleem Sinai, it is a story in which reality meets myth, in which dreams turn into facts, in which countries live tormented and tragic lives, resembling closely those of human beings that inhabit them.

Krishna's mission in Supercop of Aryavrat is to cut through the legend of the hero and show us the mortal side of god. He doesn't want the pompous metaphors and flowery hyperbole of a war epic to bury his other qualities -- his tenderness, his insecurity, his honesty and lack of guile.

Finally I finished A Gentleman In Moscow! I don't know what kept me so long because it is a very beautiful book. The concept is original: a Russian nobleman put under house arrest in a hotel by the Russian government. It takes a long time in space: from 1922 until 1954. The point of view is unique, the story being told by this man in this quiet isolated and seemingly lonely position.

This book reveals the devastation that takes place in the Philippines as a result of the war. The author did a good job of describing some of the places in utter ruins.