Tove Ditlevsen’s slim 1967 memoir — often viewed as a mere bridge between the popular Childhood and the critically acclaimed Dependency — starts off with its author getting fired from her first job on her first day, and soon after “accelerate[s] from zero to sixty before anyone has a chance to buckle up,” as Deborah Eisenberg wrote in her review, “Awful but Joyful.” Ditlevsen juggles jobs that pay very little; fends off pesty coworkers with such “low, mean thoughts that penetrate [her] skin”; gets fired again, this time for accidentally supporting unions; tolerates clumsy boyfriends whose embraces “don’t make [her] feel anything”; narrates newspaper headlines of fascism rising around her; all while trying to publish poetry that is deemed as "not good" by ancient male editors. Unlike most airport memoirs and much bestsellling autofiction today, Ditlevsen refuses to, as Megan O’Grady puts it, “present her failings as steps on the path to some mythical plane of self-awareness” — which makes this essential reading for our main character obsessed times. Despite Ditlevsen's conclusion that youth is something “you have to get through,” Youth warrants a close reading so we can find the necessary acceptance of our minor-character 20s and cross over into our dependency-striken 30s.
I picked this up in Dublin, and as I strolled around, I could not stop thinking of what Matar said he wonders whenever he is in a new city: “What is it like to be born in this place, and what is it like to die here?”
Noor Naga’s debut novel is a dark love story of two doomed lovers, a wealthy Egyptian-American woman from Upper West Side and an unemployed Egyptian man, a drug addict from the village of Shobrakheit, who meet at a cafe in post—Arab-Spring Cairo. The novel is told in chapters of alternating voices of the two lovers, as they reinforce and contradict the tellings of their affair until it takes a violent turn. A question posed at the beginning of the novel keeps haunting the reader: “If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?” In revealing the answer to this question, Naga deftly interrogates the trope of a hyphenated-American returning to a “place they have never been before” and what their story, often at the expense of locals, says about Americans and the American identity.
I picked this up at a bookstore in Barcelona and was struck by a phrase on the opening page: “...the automatic doors sighed open.” For the rest of my trip, and ever since then, whenever I see a poor overworked automatic door, I only see it “sigh” open.
Apparently Shah Pahlavi, the King of Kings, held his outrageous party in the desert to impress two key guests: Nixon and Queen Elizabeth, and neither of them showed up.
This is Karachi’s Ferrante: an anonymous blog published from 2003-2007 by Shams (a pseudonym) journaling the life of a gay man in Karachi on pre-social-media dial-up internet. Published in nine slim volumes by Khajistan Press, they are slim and stylish enough to slip into a jacket pocket to read on a long subway ride or a single couch sitting on a lazy summer afternoon.
There is something hypnotic about Shanbagh’s prose. Also there is something compelling about a protagonist that self identifies as a coward in the opening pages.
Many friends had recommended this book to me over the years, but I had hesitated to read a novel about cricket in America. But then I read O’Neill’s brilliant short story in The New Yorker called Light Secrets and fell in love with his writing. Rachel, who had recommended this to me a few times, got this for me as a birthday gift, and I read it on a long flight to Tokyo. I loved it! I wish I had read it earlier, but maybe books have a way of finding us when we most need them.
At the book launch, Dure shared that after she finished her novel she asked her mother to read it and observed her mother to see how she would react. She said her mother's face gave away no sentiment when she was reading it, and once she finished, she said, “Aisi hee hota hai.” Which I think maybe the highest compliment for a novel.
I had always wanted to read Naipaul and had noticed this book come up many times in interviews of writers that I have admired. I read it as part of A Public Space’s reading by Amitava Kumar, and was not into it initially, but did finish it. There is something hypnotic about Naipaul’s prose, maybe the sound of his sentences?
In his notes on Naipaul, Kumar noted a scene where Naipaul used an immigrant’s imperfect grasp of the language. He said Lahiri had done so similarly in her short story “Hell-Heaven” which I read then. I then reread the final section of this book, which Piku had recommended to me many years ago, The Third and Final Continent. Lahiri always reveals a deep twist at the end of her short story, that makes you want to reread the story immediately again to try and understand how she did what she did.
When I told Matar, after a reading at Brooklyn Library, that I liked how the opening sentence of this book used the word “chest” just like the beautiful opening sentence of My Friends. He looked at me, nodded, and then went ahead and recited the opening sentence from memory. He said he had spent a full year before the first sentence came to him, and then the novel flowed naturally afterwards. During the talk he had recited lines from Hamlet, and it made me want to memorize some lines too. Maybe I’ll start with the first line of Anatomy of Disappearance.
I could only read one short story at a time. I remember reading the one about the older sister at a coffee shop and then walking back home still in the haze of that reading and processing it. My favorite was about the cousin, and the detail about how she would run on the treadmill in the living room. For many years in our living room too, next to the ironing board, and after ironing my father’s shirts, my mother would hang them on the treadmill. I could picture a living room, just like ours.
Attended Iva’s talk for this re-issued Jazz-age novel and she mentioned how no writer has prose like Parrott’s today. It is true, there is something about how purposeful, confident, and ambitious the sentences were back then, and now we have seemingly lost the ability to write such sentences.
I saw this in a bookstore in Barcelona and I really like how Shire has taken photographs his whole life and how they are put together to tell the story of a life well-lived. Inspires me to take more photos, and also put them together in a way that tells the story of me and the times I have spent with people I love.
I did not fall in love with this book as much as George did, who recommended it to me. But many strangers asked me what book I was reading when I was outside with it – which speaks to its amazing cover.
Over dinner one night, Arjun asked me how my novel was coming along. After hearing my dispiriting response, he told me how much he had loved The Correspondent and how it was Evans’s eighth novel after writing seven unpublished ones. I really liked this book, full of joy. Often when I am working on my novel, I think of this line by Lacey: “Are you revising your novel, or are you going quietly nuts?” Evans’s real life story gives me hope.
I liked the observations and sentences in some sections, but overall I found this novel’s prose to be completely devoid of joy. I feel even if it is a sad or heavy novel, there needs to be some joy in the prose to sustain the reader.
Tells the story of Brazil through the story of a truck driver, the writer’s father. Such a compelling way to tell the story of a country, through the story of one of its most powerless citizens.
Another instance of the writer using the story of a man to explain the story of a country.
The novel that made me want to write my own novel, and I have returned to it many times recently to try and dissect how AK’s story works from a structural and framework point of view.
After I finished reading this gripping book, I saw two movies that were mentioned in it: The Long Good Friday and Sexy Beast. I am now thinking I will keep a list of movies that I see because they were mentioned in books.
I love how poetry is so central to understanding life – and this novel exemplifies it.
A gift from Arjun, who knows how much I love Matar’s writing. Beautiful small booklet, a nice gift to get if you are in London and visiting John Sandoe Books.
Picked up on a visit to Berlin – where I read the first page and was blown away by Despentes’s raw prose and how cutting it is.
Such an incredible novel! The protagonist, Khaled, has an Uncle Osama who appears only briefly but is described as “useless in the kitchen except, everyone agreed, he made an outstanding omelette, and whenever he did you had to go after him to clean up the mess and check that he had switched off the burner.” I loved this line—it completely won me over. Uncle Osama steals every scene he's in. I wonder what other novels have characters named Osama—if you know of any, please tell me! And consider My Friends a recommendation from your own Uncle Osama.
I hadn’t read Edmund White before, but after reading Yiyun Li’s essay following his recent passing away, I went to the library and borrowed this book—the only one available without a wait. In some ways, it mirrors Li’s essay: it is a tribute to a friend. It is a final project White did with a lover, Hubert Sorin, who was dying of AIDS – White wrote in the intro, which he wrote two hours after Sorin’s passing, that he didn’t want to finish it, because the project felt like the only thing keeping Sorin alive. They made it together: White wrote, Sorin illustrated– a tender goodbye.
Whenever our mother meets a couple she likes, she always says afterwards, “They’re a good unit!” This novel is about a similarly good unit: Asya and Manu.
I love reading slacker novels, and this one is incredibly stylish. I watched La Chimera while reading it, and afterwards could only picture the protagonist as Josh O’Connor in a crumpled linen suit.
Our father is just like Shahnaz Habib’s father and hates to travel. He is happiest at home in Karachi! Once you read these essays, you realize why that isn’t surprising for someone with a Pakistani passport – visas and redtapes are used to keep us at bay because as someone said to Habib once on her travels, “people from third world do not travel, they immigrate.”
I really liked the structure of this memoir—each chapter begins with a photo tied to someone from Malcolm’s life. How do you tell the story of your life? One way is through moments spent with friends and family.
According to Balzac, you can tell a lot about a man by how he carries his walking stick. What would the modern-day equivalent of that be? Maybe how we carry our umbrellas?
A memoir about a two-hundred-year-old house on Landwehr Canal in Berlin. Bell tells the story of Berlin through the history of this one home—which, in a beautiful coincidence, I realized I had walked past every day when I was in Berlin. Maybe that’s why I loved it so much? I gave it as a gift to all my friends who ran the Berlin marathon—unfortunately, none of them seem to have read it.
A romance between an older man and a younger woman in 1980s East Berlin – an insight into what was once East Germany and my goal now is to read everything Jenny Erpenbeck has ever written.
I reread this Oliver Ready translation and it is so funny – even though people say Dostoevsky isn’t supposed to be funny.
Short but mighty.
Best opening chapter of all time! Forster is so funny!
Heard the audiobook while cooking. One detail that stuck with me: MI5’s criteria for recruiting spies: good eyesight, great hearing, and average height.
Another audiobook I listened to while cooking. Uncle Osama has been cooking a lot lately—more than just omelettes—and Indira Varma’s reading is incredible.
Abbas builds an automaton for Tipu Sultan, which gets looted by the British during their annexation of Mysore. The topic of western museums returning loot has been written about in detail to no avail – so James uses fiction to have Abbas travel to Europe to get his automaton back.
Nnuro writes a compelling narrative around a topic that I’ve always struggled to weave into a plot: visa issues. The cover is an incredible portrait by Amoako Boafo, whose show, what could possibly go wrong, if we tell it like it is, I saw at Gagosian a few weeks after finishing the novel.
This book is a biryani. Three layers of rice: Larkin, Bellow, Hitchens. The masala is Amis’s swaggering prose and the aloo is the interspersed writing advice.
“These family values have been since thousands of years,” Sima Aunty said in an interview to prove there is a method to the madness. The method is carefully curated caste, socio-economic, religious, and horoscope aligned marriages. But what happens if someone — especially from lower or lower middle class in rising India— dares go against this ancient arrangement? Mansi Choksi details with gripping narration the lives of four such couples and their love marriages, which are equal parts inspiring and equal parts deeply disheartening, over a period of six years. “If its worth having, it’s worth fighting for,” Cheryl Cole preached in her hit 2009 song Fight for this Love. That’s the question that haunts these eloped couples: is it worth it? In one heartbreaking scene, a defeated lover sends out this regret-filled text: “Love marriage = destroy life of everyone who belong to you”
Wang Xiaobo wrote under authoritarian rule about unchecked authority in a funny and urgent manner. His writing – both fiction and essays – offer us a blueprint for our times.
Maryam recommended this novel to me many times over the past years. I downloaded the audiobook before my flight from New York to Karachi and was hooked after listening to the first few scenes of Isma and Eamonn meeting for their daily coffees. The suspenseful ending was — spoiler alert! — set in Karachi and I heard it at 3x to make sure I finished by the time I landed in Karachi myself.
“It sounds like an explosion,” Gary Shteyngart notes in a video on how to pronounce Pnin. The novel starts with an immigrant professor on a train, not knowing that he is on the wrong train. I started reading this book (my first Nabokov) on a train and was suddenly worried that I might also be on the wrong train.
I enjoy reading novels that are structured like a diary and Valeria Cossati’s secret journal is the best of all time.
After reading an essay on how Turgenev managed to piss off “almost everyone he cared about'' with this book, I picked it up. I found the dialogues/debates/quarrels had incredible energy and built the momentum to propel the characters and story forward.
I took Elissa’s humor writing class many years ago and have always recommended it to everyone – now I also recommend her memoir and substack.
I came across the English translation of Girti Deewarein when the translator, Daisy Rockwell, won the Booker for her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand. A story of a struggling writer from Jalandhar (where my Grandmother was born), who crisscrosses an undivided Punjabi freely to go from Lahore to Jalandar to Shimla and back, in the 1930s, as he aspires to write and make a living. I recently saw this piece about the last remaining Koreans who remember an un-divided Korea and was reminded of the sadness that I felt when reading this century old novel: we might never get to experience what pre-partition Punjab was like.
I had read Dure’s essay and had admired how she wove Urdu poetry into English prose. Maryam, when visiting me, picked out the unread novel from my shelf and devoured it in a day and then was so eager to discuss it that I also read it in a single sitting the next day. We both discussed the many scenes where Hira dealt with so many of the same anxieties that we had when we first moved to America.
I always enjoy a multi-perspective novel. In her review of A Burning, which also has multiple narrators, Parul Sehgal noted that: “The director Akira Kurosawa famously used three cameras to shoot each scene. The A camera he placed in the most conventional position. The B camera provided swift, impressionistic shots. The C camera, he described as a “guerrilla unit.” Rolling simultaneously, the three-camera system ensured that no detail would go missing.” I heard this novel on an audiobook, after Maryam recommended it, and the voice of Misbah gave me goosebumps.
No athlete ever dominated a sport like Jehangir Khan dominated squash in the 90s: winning a world record five hundred and fifty five consecutive matches. This novel weaves in that fact, and the careers of the great Pakistani squash players, into a quietly contemplative novel about grief.
When Maryam read the first draft of my novel in December 2022, she told me that the novel felt disjointed. She liked the Karachi sections of my novel but found the New York ones lacking. She told me she had felt similarly when reading Shamsie’s Best of Friends, like this review, and asked me to read it. I also loved the Karachi half of Shamsie’s novel, and felt disappointed by the London half, and started revising my draft.
In my past trips to Karachi, I have come home with many books, aspiring to catch up on my reading list, and have gone back with all of them unread. This time I wanted to keep just one book. I ended up picking one in which the author is also visiting his hometown and journals daily— a practice that I’ve always aspired to keep but have never had the discipline to do so.
Designed by Maryam