Reviews with content warning for Colonisation - The Centre

Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

21 reviews

albernikolauras's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This might end up being a favorite of the year. I just don't know.

The Centre follows Anisa as she finds out about a language school that allows you to master the language in 10 days (for quite a price) and how Anisa's life changes because of it. This book is rich in character study as you follow Anisa into her obsession of becoming a renowned translator. This book drips with discussions on colonialism and its affects on language, people, and their families. I think it handles this discussion on a level that I wished Babel had (disclaimer - I DNFed Babel 30% in so maybe it changed).

Such a fun book with such a complicated character.

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lizzym126's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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bloupibloupreads's review against another edition

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funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.25

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dafni's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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crgrace's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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readwithbells's review against another edition

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5.0

What a freaking read. I wish I had a physical copy so I could have highlighted things because it had so much going on I feel like annotations would only have been a good thing. This is a text on appropriation and consumer culture, critiquing elite universities that promote inclusion despite their racist and colonialist histories. This is about an unreliable (and selfish) narrator completely enmeshed in capitalist consumerism and internet wokeness that manifests itself as constant moral critiques of every person around her (and of course, never of herself). The Centre itself is fascinating, and although I accidentally spoiled the twist for myself by checking the trigger warnings, it was still an absolute delight t try king to figure out how it all worked. I could have had another 200 pages inside Anisa’s head (though Naima is obviously the best character). Genuinely obsessed with this. I had such a good time.

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thecriticalreader's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqui is not what it appears to be based on its description, which makes it sound like a horror or thriller novel. Instead, it’s a quiet, almost slice-of-life, story and a self-aware philosophical musing on power. The writing style is clear, casual, and familiar, which works in the book’s favor, both in terms of readability and in terms of how it interacts with the story’s plot and thematic elements.

The strongest part of the book for me is the relationships between the main character Anisa and her friends. Anisa is so well-realized, she feels like a real person—outwardly likable and relatable but also destructive in her selfish, casual wielding of privilege for her own benefit. Her relationship with her best friend particularly fascinating. It was these complicated relationship dynamics that I enjoyed most about the book.

The Centre broaches a lot of philosophical questions, most of which relate to the theme of power and how people wield it—who has it, who deserves it, how it takes shape in interpersonal relationships where the parties have different and unequal privileges, and whether it can be wielded for moral purposes. The book fails to answer the questions it broaches, but I still found them interesting.

I believe this book will be deeply polarizing. It doesn’t provide answers to its questions, it doesn’t provide resolution to its story, the main character holds deeply questionable morals, and it appears to (unwittingly?) reflect a degree of self-hatred/internalized oppression on the author’s part. Nevertheless, its willingness to ask uncomfortable questions, its creative premise, and well-written and fascinating relationship dynamics outweighed the drawbacks for me.

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anntharai's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Normally if I guess the twist it can't be a 5 star book for me, but even though I got it early on I thought this book was fantastic. Its also one of the best applications of audiobook production I've heard. Tiny bit obsessed.

It's the layering that gets me, it's not just about one thing. The esstereggs are there (including on the cover art, IMO but no idea if that's intentional or not)

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feministmidwife's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

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escapismforlife's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Thanks to Zando Projects for accepting me to read the eARC for The Centre, it was a ride and unexpected one for me to but I enjoyed this ominous and modern story. This book had me conscious and reflective of how varied or similiar the lifestyle of protagnist Anisa's, is. It's often tied down by her selfish mentality and vaules that come from living in this case London and the unfamiliarity of her ethnicity there.The relationships she has are not stable in a country that is not completely hers and she therefore makes a lot of her proximity to anyone more distanced.

Anisa wants more when in comes to her job that she does translating Bollywood movies,which like almost everything has become a thing to improve upon or move on from. That is of course until she is a told about the highly exclusive language school The Centre which she is told about from this guy Adam. Its a place you can go to learn to speak fluently in ten days and is meant to be kept a seceret by those who know about it. Anyways while they have a complicated date relationship to each other she goes after receiving her invite. And along the way discovers a whole lot and builds relationship with the very top person and manger Shiba . Its very obscure about what's happening until the very end and did so along the formation of them growing closer.

I definitely had no clue how this mystery or thriller ended. It was so dark but made the most sense to why everything around The Centre was so private.

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