KhepiAri

Book Review: Mokusei by Cess Nooteboom and Adrienne Dixon Quote: Whether he had been asleep for a long time or not, did not know, only that he had dreamt that he was still in the aeroplane high above the ocean, on the way to her. An eighty-five pages long tragic love story of Arnold Presser, a Dutch photographer and a Japanese model, Sakoto. My soft spot of anything remotely related Japanese got me this. Originally written in Dutch, the book has a promising beginning. Opens with a conversation between a diplomat De Goede and Presser. The conversation between both brings out the difference between observation, expectations, and reality. To Presser, Japan is the land of beautiful gestures, kimonos, Mt. Fuji, Basho's Haikus and Hokusai's paintings: a Japan devoid of pollution, consumerism and expanding modern cities. While De Goede explains this very idea of Japan and it's culture in the heads of visitors ends up repulsing them of Japanese culture as their expectat...

Book Review- Rashtraman: Rhastrayana- Trouble in Paradise by Appupen The First lady has been kidnapped by the terrorists from Paddstan. Idiots! You know what this makes our great leader look like? A bloody Laddu! That's what! Declare Emergency. For people familiar with Appupen's Halahala Universe, this book stands out from the list for being the slimmest of the lot. The art is an explosion of colour, a stark contrast to Appupen's previous monotone work. The narrative is also quite refreshing   -- the silent comic or lack of speech that has become synonymous with Halahala: the dystopian universe rigged with greed, addiction, lust and destruction; has been forgotten here. Rashtrayana: Trouble in Paradise is a chunk taken from the life of Rashtraman -- the legendary hero of Halahala and it lampoons the present political scenario of the country. Rashtraman's antics have been documented on the internet for a while now and now on the streets in form o...

Book Review: Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini and Dan Williams Quote: First came protest, Then the siege. How does one read a poem? At one go or does one sit through it for a day? Is it the words that matter only or the history behind it? What of an illustrated book? These are the questions I always revisit before I read a book that is illustrated or is a book of poems. So my bossy was gifted this book today by our senior-editor, I grabbed it first to read. I have seen the book in every other book shop and bookfair I drop by, reviews calling it haunting enough to evoke bouts of pathos. The poetry in the book is small but stretched out on 48 pages of illustrations. Beautiful illustrations of loss and fear. If I had read the poetry without the illustrations and on a sepia page, the impact wouldn't have been the same. It's poetry inspired by a three-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose lifeless little body had washed up on shores of Turkey in 2015. A poem layered by Hossein...