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Tag: New york

  • The Inheritance of Loss

    In the mid-1980s, in a decaying house called Cho Oyu below Kanchenjunga, a bitter retired judge lives with his dog, his elderly cook and his teenage granddaughter Sai, sent to him after her parents' death. Sai falls into a tentative romance with Gyan, her Nepali tutor, just as the Gorkhaland insurgency begins to radicalise young men in Kalimpong and the surrounding hills.

    In alternating chapters, the cook's son Biju moves from one New York restaurant kitchen to the next as an undocumented worker, sleeping in basements and measuring himself against the America he imagined. Flashbacks show the judge's own youth in Cambridge, where racism taught him to despise his Indianness and, in turn, his wife.

    Kiran Desai writes with wry humour and tender detail about colonial hangovers, migration and the humiliations that pass down generations. The novel won the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2006; Desai is the daughter of Anita Desai, three times shortlisted for the same prize.

    Book details

    AuthorKiran Desai
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)324
    SettingKalimpong in the eastern Himalaya and New York, mid-1980s
    AwardsBooker Prize 2006, National Book Critics Circle Award 2006

    Themes

    • Postcolonial identity
    • Migration
    • Insurgency
    • Humiliation
    • Globalisation

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in the immigrant experience and quiet, ironic family drama set in the Himalayan foothills.

  • The Godfather

    Vito Corleone, a Sicilian immigrant, has built the most powerful of New York's five Mafia families through loyalty, favours and calculated violence. At his daughter's lavish wedding in 1945, he grants requests from those who seek his help. His youngest son Michael, a decorated Marine who has kept away from the family business, attends with his American girlfriend Kay Adams.

    When the Don refuses to support a rival's move into narcotics, an attempt on his life plunges the families into war. The hot-headed eldest son Sonny takes charge, adopted son and lawyer Tom Hagen advises, and Michael finds himself pulled in. A period in Sicily and the brutal logic of power gradually transform him, while the book also follows figures such as the singer Johnny Fontane in Hollywood.

    Puzo presents the Mafia as a parallel society with its own codes of honour, family and justice, a portrait that shaped how the world imagines organised crime. The novel was a massive bestseller and became the basis of Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film, co-written with Puzo, often ranked among the greatest films ever made.

    Book details

    AuthorMario Puzo
    First published1969
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)448
    SettingNew York City, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Sicily, 1945-1955

    Themes

    • Family loyalty
    • Power
    • Corruption
    • Immigrant experience
    • Violence

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a gripping crime saga about family, honour and the price of power.

  • The Catcher in the Rye

    Sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield has just been kicked out of Pencey Prep, another school in a series he has failed at. Rather than go home and face his parents, he leaves early and spends a couple of days wandering Manhattan in the weeks before Christmas, checking into a seedy hotel, visiting bars, calling old acquaintances and dodging the reckoning he knows is coming.

    Holden narrates in a restless, slangy, digressive voice, dismissing almost everyone he meets as phony. Beneath the sarcasm lies grief for his younger brother Allie, who died of leukaemia, and a fierce protectiveness toward his little sister Phoebe, the one person he trusts completely. His encounters with a former teacher, a girlfriend and strangers reveal how lonely and fragile he is.

    Salinger's novel caught the inner life of adolescence with startling honesty: the hunger for authenticity, the dread of adulthood and the wish to shield innocence. It was banned in many schools for its language and frankness, which only deepened its cult status. Readers still argue over whether Holden is a perceptive critic of society or a boy in crisis who needs help.

    Book details

    AuthorJ. D. Salinger
    First published1951
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)234
    SettingPennsylvania prep school and New York City, late 1940s

    Themes

    • Adolescence
    • Alienation
    • Grief
    • Loss of innocence
    • Authenticity

    Who should read it

    Readers who want the definitive novel of teenage disaffection, told in one of American fiction's most distinctive voices.