Goerge Orwell: ANIMAL FARM (5/5)

A group of animals, led by the pigs, in Manor Farm rebelled against their owners. After a triumphant uprising, they run the farm and renamed it as Animal Farm. The story is a thinly veiled characterization of the Bolshevik Revolution against the Russian monarchs, the eventual installation of communism in Russia, and how the communist bureaucracy operated years after.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD (4/5)

It is a short novel from the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez chronicling the tragic story of Santiago Nasser. Five hours after the much heralded marriage of Bayando San Roman and Angela Vicario, the groom returned the bride to her mother. The repercussion of this act conjured events possible only in Marquez's landscape. While the novel is short, it really manifested Marquez's power as a vivid storyteller.

Michel Houellebecq: THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (aka ATOMISED) (2.5/5)

This novel won the 2002 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It is about two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno, who pursued divengent paths: one carnal and the other intellectual, both leading to pain and nothingness. The depiction of sex scenes in the novel is very graphic, sometimes even bordering on being pornographic. It is also a framed narrative and the real intention of the writer is only revealed at the end.

Antonio Tabucci: PEREIRA DECLARES (5/5)

The story opened on July 25, 1938 in Lisbon, Portugal. This time, at the dawn of the Second World War, a civil war was being waged in Spain and fanaticism was spreading like wildfire in Germany and Italy.The Spanish civil war started in 1936 when a coup d’etat was launched by a group of Spanish army generals against the 2nd Spanish Republic, then headed by President Manuel Azana. The rebels are called the Nationalists and the government people are called the Republicans. The Republicans were supported by Mexico and the Soviet Union, while the Nationalists, by the Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Portugal. Portugal was then under the dictatorial regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

Under this political climate, the story of a culture-page editor, Dr. Pereira, of a second-class Portugese newspaper, Lisboa, was splayed layer by layer like an old Fellini movie. After the death of his wife, Pereira was only interested in three things: death, the memory of his wife, and the memory of his youth. Apathetic of things happening around him, he met a young Philosophy graduate, Francesco Monteiro Rossi, and his girlfriend Martha. The two, together with confluence of events, would be instrumental for Pereira to finally come to his senses and break free from numbness and apathy.

As this novel is a testament, no wonder Tabucci is often rumored to be one of the contenders of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Joseph Conrad: THE HEART OF DARKNESS (3.5/5)

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—"The horror! The horror!"


Many works, both literary and in film, have been influenced by this work. The historical link of this work is the pillage and atrocities done by King Leopold II of Belgium in Congo Free State. In the novella, Charlie Marlowe narrated how he was hired to go to Congo and captain a steamer to find Mr. Kurtz. And in his travel in the Congo River, from the Central Station to the Inner Station, he saw the horror of the Belgian colonial rule.

Roberto Bolano: THE AMULET (3.5/5)

The narrator is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan, who went illegally to Mexico in 1965. She took odd jobs in the University. She also worked for free in the houses of two poets: Don Leon Felipe and Don Pedro. Leon Felipe died in 1968; Pedro Garfias, in 1967. Oftentimes, she mingled with Mexican poets and professors, hearing all gossips about them.

In October 2, 1968, the riot police invaded the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) during the now infamous Tlatelolco massacre, ten days before the 1968 Mexico Olympics. During this time, Auxilio was in the restroom of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature reading the book of Pedro Garfias. She cannot went out of the restroom for fear of being arrested, tortured, and deported back to Uruguay. The police barricaded UNAM for twelve days, and Auxilio remained inside the restroom, surviving only by drinking water and eating toilet paper. Amid hunger and fear, she remembered her friends and Mexican poets.

Wonderful!

Roberto Bolano: DISTANT STAR (4/5)

This is the first Robert Bolano book I have read. It is a bold, hair-raising account of an autodidact who launched his New Chilean Poetry through murder, gore, torture, excesses, and political connivance with the Pinochet government. I cannot wait to read the other works of Bolano.

Ernest Hemingway: THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (5/5)

This is the novella that won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize, and eventually the main cause for Hemingway to win the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year. It is a tale of perseverance, fortitude and courage.

Ma Jian: STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE (4/5)

A man feeling the emotional trauma brought about by a recenly failed marriage travelled to Tibet. Through a series of vignettes, the man experienced Tibet very radically different from his expections- and for all our expectations. Some scenes are very shocking, sparingly told, yet vivid.

This is the novel that caused Ma Jian to be banned in China.