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1. Granta would definitely have to be one book I'll remember for a long time. Both for the imprint-leaving stories and the fact that the imprinting process was a painfully long one. ---  Barker, Barnes, Hollinghurst, Ishiguro, Mitchell, Rushdie, Smith, Tremain, Winterson . . . Long before they were household names, they were Granta Best of Young British Novelists. With each Young Novelist list — in 1983, 1993, and 2003 — came new ways of witnessing the world, introductions to unforgettable characters and mysterious and addictive voices. In 2013, thirty years after the first collection, the magazine asked once again: which writers are setting the bar for a new decade in British literature?  --- --- Granta 123 : Best Of Young British Novelists 4 By Various Authors 240pp | Granta Publications $13.33  | Rs799 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, as much as I don't want to say this, G...

There are two types of crime thriller / murder mystery novels. One are those, which throw in innumerable characters with seemingly incomprehensible and complex plot at the very start. Then there are those, which look simple and straightforward in the beginning, with no complex character entanglements, but which go on to prove your assumptions entirely wrong as you progress. This one, belongs to the second category. ---  When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away? As Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly unrelated sequence of events he finds himself falling for Ayane. When his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel the most spectacular web of deceit they ha...

Talk about deviant/unusual narrative and this book stands out from the rest of the crowd like an apple in a box of mangoes. An apple as fresh as they come. Though it's not easy to review something you find extremely beautiful and I'll nevertheless try to be as neutral as I can. But, let's read the blurb first.. --- Circa 1990.A world drawn and woven with words. A bond punctuated by absence and distance...Two continents. Two cities. Two people.And letters. Hundreds of them.Over years. Across oceans. Between hearts. Between Abhi, who is training to be a neurosurgeon in London, and Uma, who is just stepping into the world of medicine in Kolkata. As they ink their emotions onto paper, their lives get chronicled in this subtly nuanced conversation through letters ... letters about dreams, desires, heartbreaks, and longings... about a proverbial good life falling apart, about a failed marriage, a visceral loss, and about a dream that threatens social expectations...Lett...

The very first thing I'd say about The Casual Vacancy is, that most people will not find it to be what they expected earlier. They would be surprised and in many cases disappointed. And that any and everything about the book was kept like the secret of The Holy Grail  along with a drab cover couldn't help it much either. Still, there are things to like in the book, like the strong characters and the trademark Rowling style narration. But first, the book's blurb, ---  When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils ... Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for t...

The praise by The Wall Street Journal on the cover of the book reads 'Meet the John Grisham of banking'. It does what it's put there for. It impresses. The back cover has this blurb, --- Bankers build their careers on trust, or so everyone thinks, till a series of murders threaten to threaten to destroy the reputation that the Greater Boston Global Bank(GB2) has built over the years. Who is behind these killings, and what is their motive? Is the banker at GB2 fast turning into a bankster? Or was he always was? When Karan Panjabi, press reporter and ex-banker, digs deeper, he realizes that he has stumbled upon a global conspiracy with far-reaching ramifications - a secret that could not only destroy the bank, but also cast a shadow on the entire nation. With only thirty-six hours left at his disposal, he must fight the clock and trust no one if he is to stay alive and uncover the truth. ---