Pachinko by Lee Min-jin My rating: 3 of 5 stars A saga of Korean immigrants that covers three generations of a family and their strife and trials as they try to assimilate into Japanese society. The story is fascinating as it highlights the issues of Korean culture and the discrimination they faced at the hands of their colonisers, the Japanese. It tackles the issue of what it means to be a Korean living in Japan at the turn of the century and up until the 21st century. Identity remains at the core of this heart wrenching family saga. The story begins with Sunja who along with her mother runs a boarding house for working class men. They lead a hard, simple life. Sunja's attraction for a wealthy man who is much older than her leaves her pregnant. But she refuses his offer of becoming his mistress and instead marries the minister who is staying at their boarding house, moving with him to Japan. Even though Sunja's story is central to the book, it is as much a book of the sec
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree My rating: 5 of 5 stars Geetanjali Shree's original book in Hindi is called Ret Samadhi and the translated version by Daisy Rockwell is Tomb of Sand. The writer's style is lyrical and captures the essence of an Indian family completely and evocatively. In fact the amazing thing about the author's style is that it goes above and beyond the cast of characters, roping in inanimate objects (like the door, for instance), the natural elements, crows and invisible things like borders. The story lies not so much in the plotline of an old woman and her journey to find the house and man she has left behind as in highlighting the nuances of families, countries, borders, neighbourhoods, galis and mohallas , the environment, the smells, sounds and landscape, the past and present and everything in between (including a delightful treatise on the silk sari as narrated from the point of view of a crow!) that makes up the heart and soul of India. The writi