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A review by shaguftap
The One Who Wrote Destiny by Nikesh Shukla
3.0
My reading lately has been a series of “ nearly but not quite done” books, (combo of abandoned books, starting something new or library recalls) but finally I have finished a book! This is Nikesh Shukla’s latest novel and his last book was the amazing anthology “The Good Immigrant” so my expectations were high going into this read.
My feelings about this book are mixed. There is a lot of commentary through the characters observations and thoughts about race and migration in the UK and I loved a lot of those sections of the book ( the madness of chai tea, the excellence standard people of colour need to meet, the fear of migration, the impact of hatred and much more). In terms of the plot and the characters though, though I found the descriptions of being South Asian in the sixties in the U.K quite powerful, I struggled to connect with the book overall. The book is told from the perspective of diff characters in diff time periods and although I normally enjoy that kind of structure, I don’t know how successful this structure was in this book. The plot was more just a carrier for those observational nuggets which were the strongest parts of Shukla’s writing for me.
A 3.5 star read for me.
My feelings about this book are mixed. There is a lot of commentary through the characters observations and thoughts about race and migration in the UK and I loved a lot of those sections of the book ( the madness of chai tea, the excellence standard people of colour need to meet, the fear of migration, the impact of hatred and much more). In terms of the plot and the characters though, though I found the descriptions of being South Asian in the sixties in the U.K quite powerful, I struggled to connect with the book overall. The book is told from the perspective of diff characters in diff time periods and although I normally enjoy that kind of structure, I don’t know how successful this structure was in this book. The plot was more just a carrier for those observational nuggets which were the strongest parts of Shukla’s writing for me.
A 3.5 star read for me.