Reading list

Ulysses

By James Joyce

Rs 472



Any novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens? In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be.. Everything. William Blake, one of literature’s sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality.



Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom’s case) masturbate.



And thanks to the book’s stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we’re privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories.





Women in Love 

By D. H Lawerence

Rs 312



The published editions of Women in Love, probably Lawrence’s greatest novel, have always been remarkably corrupt due to a lengthy, complex process of revision and transcription, a threatened libel suit, and numerous unauthorized bowdlerizations.



The editors of this new Cambridge Edition have labored scrupulously to produce an authoritative text. What emerges, if not dramatically different, is fresher and more immediate.



The introduction provides a valuable history of the novel’s composition, revision, publication, and reception, and though the elaborate textual apparatus is strictly for advanced students of bibliography, the notes are splendid. Lawrence’s 1919 Foreword and two early discarded chapters are also included.



Snake Lake

By Jeff Greenwald

(Author of Shppping for Buddha)

Rs 1,060



Journalist Greenwald (Shopping for Buddhas) spent the spring of 1990 reporting from Kathmandu as opposition to Nepal’s repressive monarchy boiled over into violence. The setting offered Greenwald political adrenaline, lush atmospherics, romance and spirituality as he began a torrid affair with an expat photojournalist and took instruction from a Buddhist sage.



But the meltdown of his depressed brother Jordan drags him away just as the Nepalese revolution is heating up--and shunts the memoir into an odd portrait of American neurosis. Jordan is a mannered, haughty figure, a brilliant linguist who disdains popular culture, speaks in antique diction--“No man; no beast; no creature of the sea is as wretched as I”--and infuriates people by mimicking them; his hidden sexual dysfunction is the un involving mystery at the book’s heart.



Available at:
Mandala Book Point, Kantipath,
 Phone: 4227711

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20 books to read in 2020