In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood skilfully employs clothing as a powerful literary tool to portray the limitations on women's autonomy in Gilead. The red uniform of the Handmaids transcends its material nature, becoming a symbol that depicts the constricted freedom of women in this dystopian
Amidst the nirvana of economic and political collectivisation during the Sovietization of Poland, the Poles were constrained by the lingering menace of Soviet surveillance. With the KGB’s watchful eye came an incessant apprehension; the very apprehension that influenced Stanislaw Lem’s procreation of the Planet Solaris. Standing as Lem’
Striking a chord with the current generation, Octavia Butler’s ‘The Parable of the Sower’ prophesies a future for mankind ridden by social inequality and ethnic divisions. Pulling from the rising racial tensions in the 1990s, Butler extrapolates from her own experiences as a Black woman and the deteriorating state
Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem is a science fiction novel, popularized by its unique backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution. The novel commences in medias res of the revolution with the brutal slaughter of Ye Zhetai, father of the protagonist Ye Wenjie, on the basis of “reactionary”
Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’ stands as one of the most celebrated works of young adult dystopia and consequently, the recently released prequel, ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’, gained a lot of attention. Being someone that adores ‘The Hunger Games’, I was quite eager to read this novel. For
N.K Jemisin’s ‘The Broken Earth’ trilogy is repeatedly said to have changed the world of fantasy literature. How much veracity does that really hold? This series spotlights a far-future world prone to geological devastations named ‘seasons’. The protagonist, Essun, is one of the world’s many, but disfavoured,
Topping my list, Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel is literary fantasy in all its glory. ‘The Night Circus’ transported me into a mesmeric world where “The Circus arrives without warning” and magic is pit against magic. What started out as just a NaNoWriMo project sold hundreds of thousands of copies
A fable encased by the essence of Christmas, ‘A Christmas Carol’ is a tale encompassing redemption, loss, and the dire need for compassion in a cruel world. Aside from its morals, this book comprises a well written and atmospheric story. Dickens’ novella encircles a forbidding man, Ebenezer Scrooge, and his
“Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions” A staple of the mystery genre, ‘And Then There Were None’, is a multifaceted story, condensed into a mere 240 pages. Being
1) The Summer People - Shirley Jackson Symposia: Goodreads: ‘The Summer People’ revolves around an elderly couple that spends every summer at their cottage north of New York. This summer, they decided to extend their stay as they felt as though they had outgrown the bustle of the city. Everyone
Lois Lowry’s, ‘The Giver’, is set in a supposedly utopian society, isolated from Elsewhere. The inhabitants of the community cannot feel love, pain, pride, nor sorrow. No one is any different from the other. Every year, the Ceremony of Twelve takes place where twelve year olds get appointed their
Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’, is a fast paced mystery revolving around an age-long conspiracy involving the Church and a secret society named the Priory of Sion. Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon, is called to the Louvre to help decrypt the peculiar murder of the museum’s curator, Jacques