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Tag: 1990s

  • The God of Small Things

    Set in the village of Ayemenem in Kerala, the novel moves between 1969, when the fraternal twins Estha and Rahel are seven, and 1993, when they meet again as damaged adults. Their mother Ammu, divorced and quietly defiant, lives on sufferance in her family's house alongside a pickle factory, a bitter grand-aunt and an Oxford-educated uncle who calls himself a Marxist.

    The arrival of the twins' half-English cousin Sophie Mol and Ammu's attachment to Velutha, a gifted carpenter from a Dalit family, bring the household's rules about who may love whom into sharp conflict. Roy reveals the shape of the disaster early and then circles back, so the suspense lies less in what happens than in how ordinary prejudice, politics and fear make it unavoidable.

    The prose is the book's signature: invented compound words, capitalised phrases borrowed from a child's way of seeing, and a looping chronology. It won the Booker Prize in 1997 and remains a defining Indian novel in English for the way it ties intimate grief to caste, gender and the small cruelties of respectable families.

    Book details

    AuthorArundhati Roy
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)340
    SettingAyemenem, Kerala, 1969 and 1993
    AwardsBooker Prize 1997

    Themes

    • Caste
    • Forbidden love
    • Childhood trauma
    • Family

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy lyrical, non-linear fiction and are ready for a story whose tenderness and heartbreak arrive together.

    If you liked this, try

    • A Fine Balance
    • The Inheritance of Loss
    • Clear Light of Day

  • The Moor’s Last Sigh

    Moraes Zogoiby, nicknamed the Moor, is the son of a Catholic heiress to a Cochin pepper fortune and a Jewish clerk who becomes a Bombay crime lord. Born with a clubbed hand and a body that ages at double speed, he narrates the rise and decline of his family from a hiding place in Spain, beginning with spice-trade feuds and ending in the communal politics of 1990s Bombay.

    At the centre is his mother Aurora, a brilliant and imperious painter whose canvases turn the family saga into myth, linking it to Boabdil, the last Moorish sultan of Granada. Around her swirl lovers, rival artists, a Hindu nationalist party boss modelled on real figures, and a Bombay that is losing its cosmopolitan tolerance.

    Rushdie's first full novel after the fatwa is ornate, comic and elegiac, and it mourns the loss of a mixed, plural India. It won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1995 and was shortlisted for the Booker. Readers who loved Midnight's Children will recognise the energy, darkened by exile.

    Book details

    AuthorSalman Rushdie
    First published1995
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)434
    SettingCochin, Bombay and Andalusia, Spain, late 19th century to 1990s
    AwardsWhitbread Novel Award 1995

    Themes

    • Pluralism
    • Art and power
    • Mothers and sons
    • Communalism
    • Exile

    Who should read it

    Fans of maximalist family sagas who want Rushdie's most personal lament for cosmopolitan Bombay.

    If you liked this, try

    • Midnight's Children
    • The Glass Palace
    • One Hundred Years of Solitude

  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

    Harry Potter has grown up neglected by his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs in suburban Surrey. On his eleventh birthday a giant named Hagrid tells him the truth: his parents were a witch and wizard, killed by the dark wizard Voldemort, and Harry is famous in the magical world for surviving the attack as a baby.

    Harry enters Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, travelling from a hidden platform at King's Cross. He befriends Ron Weasley and the brilliant, rule-abiding Hermione Granger, discovers a talent for the airborne sport Quidditch, clashes with the snobbish Draco Malfoy and the cold Professor Snape, and starts to suspect that something valuable is being guarded inside the castle.

    Rowling combines a boarding-school story with a richly imagined hidden world of wands, houses, ghosts and magical creatures. The book was rejected by several publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it, then launched a seven-book series that became a worldwide phenomenon. It was published in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

    Book details

    AuthorJ. K. Rowling
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreFantasy
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)223
    SettingSurrey and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Scotland
    AwardsNestle Smarties Book Prize 1997

    Themes

    • Friendship
    • Belonging
    • Courage
    • Good versus evil
    • Orphanhood

    Who should read it

    Young readers starting out with fantasy and adults who want to see where the phenomenon began.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    • Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
    • The Hobbit

  • Long Walk to Freedom

    Nelson Mandela began writing his autobiography in secret on Robben Island, where the manuscript was smuggled out in parts, and completed it after his release with help from the editor Richard Stengel. It was published in 1994, the year he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.

    The book starts in the Transkei village of Qunu, where Mandela grew up as a member of the Thembu royal house, and follows him to Fort Hare University and Johannesburg, where he trained as a lawyer and opened the country's first Black law practice with Oliver Tambo. He describes joining the African National Congress, the Defiance Campaign, the Treason Trial, the turn to armed struggle and the Rivonia Trial that sent him to prison for life.

    Long chapters on prison life show the daily humiliations of Robben Island, the friendships among prisoners, and the slow negotiations with the apartheid government that led to his release in 1990. Measured and reflective rather than bitter, it is essential reading on one of the twentieth century's defining political struggles.

    Book details

    AuthorNelson Mandela
    First published1994
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)656
    SettingSouth Africa, 1918-1994

    Themes

    • Apartheid
    • Resistance
    • Imprisonment
    • Reconciliation
    • Leadership

    Who should read it

    Anyone wanting a first-hand account of the struggle against apartheid and the character of the man who led it.

    If you liked this, try

    • Born a Crime
    • I Am Malala
    • The Autobiography of Malcolm X

  • The Power of Now

    Eckhart Tolle opens with an account of a crisis in his late twenties, when years of anxiety and depression gave way overnight to a deep, lasting inner stillness. The book is his attempt to describe that shift and show readers how to reach it without waiting for a breakdown. First published by a small Vancouver press, it later became a worldwide bestseller.

    Written largely in a question-and-answer format, it argues that most human unhappiness comes from compulsive thinking and from living in an imagined past or future. Tolle introduces the idea of watching the thinker, recognising the pain-body as an accumulated store of old emotional hurt, and using the breath and the sensations of the body as doorways into the present. Acceptance of what is, he says, is not passivity but the ground for wise action.

    The language borrows freely from Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Christian mysticism and Taoism without belonging to any single tradition. Readers either find it life-changing or vague, but it remains one of the most widely read introductions to mindfulness and nondual spirituality in the West.

    Book details

    AuthorEckhart Tolle
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreSelf-help
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)236

    Themes

    • Presence
    • Ego
    • Mindfulness
    • Acceptance
    • Inner peace

    Who should read it

    Readers dealing with anxiety or restless thinking who are open to a spiritual, non-religious approach to calm.

    If you liked this, try

    • A New Earth
    • The Untethered Soul
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are

  • Rich Dad Poor Dad

    Robert Kiyosaki frames his personal-finance book around two father figures from his childhood in Hawaii. His own father was a highly educated government employee who worked hard yet struggled with money. The father of his best friend left school early but built a string of businesses and taught the boys to make money work for them rather than working for money.

    From that contrast Kiyosaki draws a set of lessons: the rich buy assets that generate income while the middle class buy liabilities they believe are assets, a house being his most controversial example. He urges readers to learn accounting, investing, markets and law, to mind their own business in the sense of building an asset column, and to use corporations and taxes to their advantage.

    Written with co-author Sharon Lechter, the book was originally self-published and grew into a global bestseller and a large brand of games and seminars. It has been criticised for vague advice and for the uncertain reality of the rich dad character, but it is widely credited with getting ordinary readers to think about cash flow and passive income.

    Book details

    AuthorRobert T. Kiyosaki
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreBusiness
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)207
    SettingHawaii

    Themes

    • Financial literacy
    • Assets and liabilities
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Passive income
    • Education

    Who should read it

    Readers new to personal finance who want a motivational push to think about investing and side income rather than only a salary.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Psychology of Money
    • Think and Grow Rich
    • The Millionaire Next Door