Paperback Sunday

1. I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, paperback, published by Vintage, pp 688, Rs 500

2. The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, paperback, published by Picador, pp 304, Rs 650

3. The Castle by Franz Kafka, paperback, published by Vintage, pp 304, Rs 795

4. Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, paperback, published by Abacus, pp 320, Rs 595

5. Unforgiving Heights by Betsey Barnes, published by Penguin Books India, pp 371, Rs 595 1.

What the books are about

I Am Charlotte Simmons

Dupont University — the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America’s youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition — or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from Sparta, North Carolina, who has come here on a full scholarship. But Charlotte soon learns that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time. As Charlotte encounters Dupont’s elite — her roommate, Beverly, a fleshy, privileged Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont’s godlike basketball team; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Gellin, one of the Millennium Mutants who run the university’s ‘independent’ newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavour on campus — she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence.

The Piano Tuner

On a misty London afternoon in 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the War Office: he must leave his wife, and his quiet life in London, to travel to the jungles of Burma to tune a rare Erard grand piano. The piano belongs to Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, an enigmatic British officer, whose success at making peace in the war-torn Shan states is legendary, but whose unorthodox methods have begun to attract suspicion. So begins the journey of Edgar across Europe, the Red Sea, India, Burma, and into the remote highlands of Shan states. En route he is entranced by the Doctor’s letters and by the shifting cast of tale-spinners, soldiers and thieves who cross his path. As his captivation grows, however, so do his questions: about the Doctor’s true motives, about an enchanting and elusive woman who travels with him into the jungle, about why he came. And, ultimately, whether he will ever be able to return home unchanged to the woman who awaits him... Sensuous and lyrical, rich with passion and adventure, The Piano Tuner is a hypnotic tale of myth, romance and self-discovery.

The Castle

The Castle is the story of K, the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. As he encounters dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, and reason and nonsense, K’s struggles in the absurd, labyrinthine world where he finds himself seem to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. Kafka began The Castle in 1922 and it was never finished, yet this, the last of his three great novels, draws fascinating conclusions that make it feel strangely complete.

Queen of Dreams

In Queen of Dreams, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni once more spins a fresh, spellbinding story of transformation. Rakhi, a young artist and divorced mother living in Berkeley, California, is struggling to keep her footing, with her family and her world in alarming transition. Her mother is a dream-teller, born with the ability to share and interpret the dreams of others, to foresee and guide them through their fates. This gift fascinates Rakhi, but also isolates her from her mother’s past in India and the dream world she inhabits, and she longs for something to bring them closer. Caught beneath the burden of her painful secret, Rakhi’s solace comes in the discovery, after her mother’s death, of her dream journals, which begin to open the long-closed doors to her past as Rakhi’s mother writes ‘A dream is a telegram from the hidden world’. In lush elegant prose, Divakaruni has crafted a vivid and enduring dream that reveals hidden truths about the world we live in, from which readers will be reluctant to wake.

Unforgiving Heights

Mitra Kittredge is a young, multi-lingual American diplomat in a small Himalayan kingdom. When her senior colleague is sent to Washington for medical treatment, political unrest begin to mount. Mona’s talents are tapped for negotiations at the very highest level. She enjoys the challenge, but there are other things on her mind: she and the new ambassador were well acquainted back in Turkey, and now that he has followed her to this posting, Mona must set the terms of their relationship. Meanwhile two of her best friends fall in love, or do they? When diplomat’s children are kidnapped, Mona finds herself deep in the mountains, unravelling more mysteries than she knew existed.

Information courtesy: UNITED BOOKS, Ganesh Man Singh building, Northfield Cafe ph: 4229 512; Bluebird stores in Lazimpat & Tripureshwore, ph: 4245 726; Momo’s and More, Old Baneshwor; Himalayan Java; Saturday Cafe, Bouddha; Namaste Supermarket in Pulchowk, ph: 5525 017