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krishnendu's Reviews (58)
"Your childhood is your homeland.""The Lighthouse Family" fills your heart and then breaks it into smithereens. The little boy uprooted from his homeland stays with you long after you close the book. The tall white lighthouse by the deep blue sea, a symbol of isolation and hope, stands tall from beginning to end.
Heavy with Anatolian history, the book tells the story of a family of six in the Turkish village of Sarpincik, uptooted from their homelands due to the Turkish-Greek ethno-political tensions and the Second World War. It is an incredibly intimate look into how intergenerational trauma caused by war shapes lives long after the whistles are blown. We follow a happy, carefree boy who ends up a despondent writer thousands of miles away, experiencing a life of death, longing, and nationalism along the way.
Sunel’s writing is deeply personal, almost like a memoir. It’s the kind of writing that pulls you in and makes you feel like you’re living the story alongside the characters. You feel their pain, their hope, and their struggles as if they were your own.
It's a highly recommended read for people who enjoy historical fiction. This book definitely deserves more attention than it gets.
This volume lays bare how Israeli occupation goes beyond territorial control, distressing the average Palestinian life through control over water, agriculture, transport, taxes, employment, hospitals, schools, and even funerals, enforced through pervasive, prying IDF eyes and guns. Some find Joe Sacco's Palestine biased precisely because it is unbiased.
Turned out to be a horrifying book without it trying to be one. A holistic record of how globalised (read americanized), unsustainable, hazardous food production systems driven by callous profit-greedy monopolies are powerful enough to threaten lives and livelihoods across the Global South. It addresses how modern agribusiness dreamscapes like monocultures, genetically modified organisms (living modified organisms, my bad) and their presumed irrelevance of the natural ecological balance threaten our very existence as a species.
Not surprisingly, none of this is part of those genetic engineering chapters in biology textbooks, although being important enough to be essential readings.
Not surprisingly, none of this is part of those genetic engineering chapters in biology textbooks, although being important enough to be essential readings.
The book had immense potential with its themes of colonialism and conflict migration, but it doesn’t quite deliver. The story centers on Farid, a Libyan refugee (and his mom), and Vito, an unaffected Italian boy (and his mom), against the backdrop of Italy’s colonisation of Libya and Gaddafi’s regime—yet it never fully comes together. The plot feels thin, and the characters lack the depth needed to engage with its weighty themes. The prose, which could have been powerful, feels flat, but it may be that the translation stripped away its emotional impact. The overuse of absurd, forced similes and metaphors doesn't help either.
Overall, the book felt like a missed opportunity.
Overall, the book felt like a missed opportunity.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Part 1: The world is suffering.
Part 2: The world is beautiful.
Part 3: The world is suffering, and that's beautiful.
Part 2: The world is beautiful.
Part 3: The world is suffering, and that's beautiful.
3.5/5
Deeply disturbing, devastating, an encyclopaedia of female suffering that kept evolving brutally as Afghanistan transitioned from monarchy to communism to Taliban rule, and finally the US invasion post 9/11. Intriguing writing, ground some teeth knowing that man's peak inconvenience there is to grow a beard, but a woman's is to be banned from studying, working, laughing out loud, going out, to become an invisible obedient babymaking subordinate to man.
A hiccup for me, however, is women's endurance and tolerance being celebrated and glorified in ways that don t sit well with me. Regardless, mariam has my whole heart and soul!
Deeply disturbing, devastating, an encyclopaedia of female suffering that kept evolving brutally as Afghanistan transitioned from monarchy to communism to Taliban rule, and finally the US invasion post 9/11. Intriguing writing, ground some teeth knowing that man's peak inconvenience there is to grow a beard, but a woman's is to be banned from studying, working, laughing out loud, going out, to become an invisible obedient babymaking subordinate to man.
A hiccup for me, however, is women's endurance and tolerance being celebrated and glorified in ways that don t sit well with me. Regardless, mariam has my whole heart and soul!