The Attack by Yasmina Khadra
A world at war with terrorism around him but Dr. Amin Jaafari, a Palestinian in Tel Aviv with Israeli citizenship is a surgeon whom the city loves and honours. His insulated upper class life changes when a bomb blast takes innocent lives and the police conclude that the doc’s beloved wife was the suicide bomber. Yasmina Khadra is the pseudonym of Algerian-soldier-turned-writer Mohammed Moulessehoul and leads us through a quest on why she took such a step. This sensitive novel portrays the reality that is terrorism with an intense writing that shakes you to the core. A Must Read.

Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Doubleday

On DSC short list

When I wrote Chinaman, I didn’t expect it to export outside of Colombo. I thought it might be read in Galle and Kandy, and if translated, in the rest of the country.

To get it read in India was a dream and to have it published in the rest of the world was beyond a dream. So now to get on a shortlist is terrific, when I consider my expectations when I started.

Detective stories are rather favourites with the average reader, especially if the sleuth is an interesting character with lots of colour to his personality. Long-lasting mystery fiction genre is often propelled by a favourite detective; think Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason (he is more of a lawyer than detective I admit), and Sherlock Holmes. Nearer home we have Feluda from Ray’s pen and now Madhulika Liddle has introduced us to another desi detective who is ready to go down into history, Muzaffar Jung.

Muzaffar is an old hand actually; he has already solved crimes for us in Liddle’s debut novel The Englishman’s Cameo. In ‘The Eighth Guest and Other Muzaffar Jung Mysteries’, the sleuth reappears to solve ten new mysteries. So what’s new? Aren’t there other mystery stories in place, you may ask? The difference here is the background. All the incidents take place in Mughal Dilli, in the time of Emperor Shajahan in the 1600s. In fact the town where all this happens is called Shajahanabad, and is a minutely detailed sketch that shows the writer’s skill. The romance and mood of the era are sustained nicely without going overboard on nostalgia.

This is the second time God’s Own Country is hosting this prestigious literary Fest

Reading, writing and publishing are in a frenzied pace these days and spaces to acknowledge the writer and his writing are multitude, like literary festivals and book fairs which are podiums felicitating both established and upcoming writers. One such festival at a small border town in Wales caught the imagination of the world twenty four years ago. Hay-on-Wye, known world-over for its secondhand and antiquarian bookshops, has a population of just 1500 but has approximately thirty major bookshops. And every year for ten days in May, about 85,000 people come in from around the world to join a celebration of stories. Writers, musicians, film-makers, scientists among others cross genre and culture barriers to share ideas and it’s a prestige to be invited to the Hay podiums.