The Envoy Shorts: Roundup of 2017

Focus Area – Asia; Focus Country – Myanmar

Charmaine Craig’s mother hails from Myanmar along with her grandparents. The deep connection that the writer shares with Burma is evident from her 2017 book, ‘Miss Burma’. She weaves a beautiful tale of love and war, colonialism and ethnicity and the complexities of different relationships by linking modern-day Myanmar with the older Burma. Through memorable characters such as Benny (based on her grandfather), Khin, and their daughter, Louisa (based on her mother), Craig delivers a powerful novel which asserts that history and fiction can work together to create magic.

Unlike Arundhati Roy’s ‘Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ where historical accounts and contemporary political developments seem to run parallel to the stories of the main protagonists, Craig extinguishes that fine line and the result is an exquisite amalgamation of reality and fiction where the characters reign supreme. The name of the novel may not contribute much to what the novel tries to do. But, it does manage to create a mystery which will take the readers by surprise. Craig’s novel was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award and the reasons are very clear. The view of Burma as provided by the writer is both enchanting and poignant. The struggle faced by the common people for self-determination and freedom has been brought out vividly by the writer, making it one of the best novels of 2017.

The Envoy Shorts: Roundup of 2017

Focus Area – Asia; Focus Country – India

Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things (1997) was an exceptionally brilliant novel which won her the Man Booker Prize that year. After two dacades, her latest venture, ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ made it to the 2017 Man Booker longlist. While it did not manage to find a place in the shortlist, as Indian fans of her work, we may have been disappointed. This novel contains a couple of very haunting lines in the first chapter itself: “Where do old birds go to die? Do they fall on us like stones from the sky? Do we stumble on their bodies in the streets? Do you not think that the All-Seeing, Almighty One who put us on this Earth has made proper arrangements to take us away?”

There are two central stories that the author has tried to weave in this novel. One is that of a transgender, Anjum, who is fond of Mughal-e-Azam and Urdu poetry. The other is of the unconventional Tilottama (referred to as Tilo) who is courted by three men. Roy has sprinkled the narrative with generous doses of history and current reality, such as the Kashmir unrest and the anti-Sikh riots. The result is a fascinating concoction of fiction and non-fiction, created by a fiction writer-turned-activist who tries to revisit her roots.

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The Envoy Shorts: Roundup of 2017

Focus Area – North America; Focus Country – United States

 

American author George Saunders won the Man Booker Prize last year for ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’: an extremely fascinating take on Abraham Lincoln and how he deals with grief in the company of ghosts in a cemetery in the year 1862. Blending fact with fiction, Saunders serves an unforgettable novel which not only reminds one of the past (the US Civil War, for instance) but also tugs at the heartstrings through dialogues between the non-living.

Saunders is the second American author to win the Man Booker Prize consecutively after Paul Beatty’s win in 2016 for ‘The Sellout’. While there was criticism about the number of American writers making it to the shortlist for 2017, it has to be acknowledged that the extremely innovative novel produced by Saunders deserved a place in that list. His novel offers a doorway to another world, where history comes alive and emotions awaken the readers. He not only explores the theme of love and loss in his novel, but also asks a crucial question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

For more about the Literary Corner, please visit http://www.theenvoy.in/Literary-Corner/