Monsoon arrives in south and rain is everywhere, every hour. The big news this week: Ngugi Wa Thiong’o passed away. A Nobel—or even the often silly Booker—would only have diminished him. He was a writer beyond the grasp of awards, in the rare company of a few legends in literary history. Classics ruled my reading this week.
2025, Week 22
Books
I’ve been meaning to read Montaigne for a long time and came across a book of the same name by Stefan Zweig. That became the first one I finished this week – then i moved on to his essays. I am going to take my own sweet time with this one.
Continuing in a similar mood, I came across Wasteland, the legendary poem and listened to it again on Storytel – Why now? Because I found a fascinating book titled The Wasteland: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis. It’s a wonderful read so far. I’ve written about Pound and Elliot before—need to dig that note out and link it here.
Here is a famous reading – by Alec Guinness – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcj4G45F9pw
Next in line :- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning. Yeh, classics rule.
I finished Han Kang’s devastating masterpiece We Do Not Part – It’s set during the Korean War—where, as usual, the world’s largest “terrorist outfit with a country”, America, landed with an army and zero instruction, and proceeded to butcher civilians, including children and women. Han Kang doesn’t name anyone directly, but the horror is unmistakable. Through personal narrative, she captures the atrocities with heartbreaking restraint.
This novel should be widely read—for its craft and courage. Between North and South Korea, nearly two million civilians were slaughtered. The “democracy exporter” dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,000 tons of napalm. Han Kang keeps her focus on personal tragedy, and that’s what makes it all the more powerful. No wonder people have been hyping this book.
Proust is moving along beautifully (this is a re-read). The first part of the second volume dwells on aristocracy; the next section revolves around his grandmother’s decline and death. It’s astonishing how much he writes—how much he notices. No wonder Knausgaard is compared to him. Masters of the mundane.
The Outing was on my list ever since I started On James Baldwin – A beautiful story about teenage angst. Baldwin subtly builds tension. Nothing overtly dramatic happens, but there’s a strong emotional undercurrent. Baldwin has a gift for natural dialogue—effortless but nuanced.
Articles
My favorite topic these days – You’ve Probably Already Met Your Next Best Friend
Paris Review opens up the famous Ngugi Interview :-
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7886/the-art-of-fiction-no-253-ngugi-wa-thiongo
and here is Violette Leduc:-
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/08/09/feminize-your-canon-violette-leduc
Series
The Last of Us ends on an interesting note, but overall it felt scattered. They’re pushing ahead with new characters, which is good. Still, I’m not convinced. Guess I will need to play the game.
Movies
Black Bag was a fun, clever spy film. Well executed. Fassbender remains one of the most underrated actors of our time.
Music
I’ve never thought Mani Ratnam was a great director (often the opposite, frankly). The same goes for A.R. Rahman—he’s good, but nowhere close to Ilayaraja in Tamil. Rahman never gave me an Annakkili or Madura Marikkozhunthu. Sure, he delivered an occasional qawwali or Malarkal Ketten (which again felt like a rehash), or Mallipoo—one of his better Tamil songs. But in the larger picture, he doesn’t come close.
Not a popular opinion, I know. But his latest soundtrack only reinforces my view.