Thumbnail Placeholder

James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain

There was a point in my life when I thought that past a certain age, I’d have it all figured out. At least the “big” stuff. The job, the personality, the social circle (or lack thereof), and the ambition. Because then, once the dust settles, the blank canvas would have some boundaries, here and...

Thumbnail Placeholder

Frank Herbert’s Dune

To understand the myth of the hero, we must first assume that the hero is real. Then continue along that trajectory to assume that the humanity that presupposes the role of a hero is also real. The truth, from that point on, is governed by a set of rules, tests that dictate the social...

Thumbnail Placeholder

Moliere’s The Misanthrope

This is, by no measure, a foolish book. It is, as the title so blatantly confesses, a misanthropic read. It’s sincere and grim. And it gets better as the story deepens and reveals its philosophy organically. Even better was its effect after having read Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born. If there’s one constant...

Thumbnail Placeholder

Arundhati Roy’s Azadi

Books like Azadi, swelling with soul and spirit, can be read in a single breath. And if you happen to read it, bit by bit, musing over her choice of words and her literary coordinates that point you to this human-made “doomsday machine,” you’ll begin to view the world differently. Arundhati Roy truly translates...

Thumbnail Placeholder

E. M. Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born

There is no other writer so gifted to have diagnosed Time as Eternity’s disease and to have endured it as a means to verify Existence as Emil Cioran. Existence, according to Cioran, would be very impractical were we to discard all our illusions. For even a single illusion of time, history, or life is...