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A review by raji_c
Land Where I Flee by Prajwal Parajuly
2.0
It’s been tough to sit down and read thanks to personal matters that demanded attention. It did not help that I couldn’t engage with this book.
I was looking forward to Land Where I Flee as my Sikkim read for my #ReadingIndia challenge. It’s been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers. And I will say that it enlightened me about socio-political aspects such as the Nepali population in India and the Nepali refugees in Bhutan. And I think its descriptions of Gangtok, Kathmandu, and Kalimpong seem very accurate.
Sadly, that’s about all I liked in the book. There wasn’t a single character I liked in it, no one I was rooting for or whose fate I was invested in. And there was so much potential! Each of the characters holds the promise of so much but just the silhouettes were tantalising. They were not fleshed out and all the hyped-up drama about events ends up as an anti-climax. I remember reading parts of the book and thinking that I felt exactly as I did when I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — over-the-top and all for the eyeballs. But this might well be just me.
However, I read Hurricane Season last year and it was a difficult book to get through, unlike anything I have ever read in structure, in plot, in writing. And there wasn’t a character there either that I loved but the writer’s power was very real on the page, even in the translated version, and I admired the book immensely. And there was a sense of if not true empathy then at least sympathy for the characters. I couldn’t muster that for anyone in Land Where I Flee, unfortunately.
At any rate, I was keen that I would not have any DNFs in my #ReadinIndia challenge and so I slogged through this.
I was looking forward to Land Where I Flee as my Sikkim read for my #ReadingIndia challenge. It’s been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers. And I will say that it enlightened me about socio-political aspects such as the Nepali population in India and the Nepali refugees in Bhutan. And I think its descriptions of Gangtok, Kathmandu, and Kalimpong seem very accurate.
Sadly, that’s about all I liked in the book. There wasn’t a single character I liked in it, no one I was rooting for or whose fate I was invested in. And there was so much potential! Each of the characters holds the promise of so much but just the silhouettes were tantalising. They were not fleshed out and all the hyped-up drama about events ends up as an anti-climax. I remember reading parts of the book and thinking that I felt exactly as I did when I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — over-the-top and all for the eyeballs. But this might well be just me.
However, I read Hurricane Season last year and it was a difficult book to get through, unlike anything I have ever read in structure, in plot, in writing. And there wasn’t a character there either that I loved but the writer’s power was very real on the page, even in the translated version, and I admired the book immensely. And there was a sense of if not true empathy then at least sympathy for the characters. I couldn’t muster that for anyone in Land Where I Flee, unfortunately.
At any rate, I was keen that I would not have any DNFs in my #ReadinIndia challenge and so I slogged through this.