Boundaries of Choice: Five Fiction Reads

It’s been some time since I last wrote about books. This post reviews five - or perhaps four and a half - novels that I have recently read. My choices span continents and genres to suit a variety of tastes but they share one thing: characters facing major, life altering choices.

We begin in the UK, where crime writer A.A. Dhand introduces us to the complicated world of a new “hero” in his challenging yet gripping novel, The Chemist. From there, Lea Ypi’s book delves back into Albanian history, exploring a diverse, many-layered, but now disappeared world. This one is the “half” - all is explained in the review below. Next, Ben Markovits’ latest novel tells the story of an unplanned road trip by a disappointed, middle-aged basketball fan.

Finally, we look at two titles from contemporary Indian writers. Both are second novels following acclaimed debut titles. Building on the success of a first book is a well-known challenge that authors sometimes fall short on, but that’s definitely not the case here.

A.A. Dhand - The Chemist

 

In this, his sixth full-length novel, Dhand introduces us to a new leading character. Idris Khan, the chemist of the title, runs a pharmacy on a rundown Leeds estate. His ex-wife, Rebecca, is one of dozens of locals who visit him every day for their methadone prescription. She fails to turn up one day and his resulting search for her draws him into a violent turf war between two powerful drug gangs. 

 

As the story progresses, Idris is provoked to commit terrible acts from loyalty and necessity. He is forced into a series of decisions that challenge both his professional oath and his personal morality, engaging in violence and using his knowledge to outwit the gang leaders. 

 

Dhand’s style creates a sense of urgency, making it difficult for the reader to resist starting the next chapter and then another one. His writing is gritty, realistic and brave. He does not shy away from tackling difficult issues, including racism and prejudice between minority communities and the impact of cultural practices on the lives of his characters. He also writes with authority. He comes from a British Asian background, has a Master of Pharmacy qualification, and several years of experience in the profession. 

 

The Chemist is not a comfortable read. The scenes that play out on the bleak housing estates on the city’s periphery are particularly dark, yet authentic. The estate residents include students, methadone users, drug gangs, the vulnerable and exploited and “ordinary” people, just trying to survive against overwhelming odds. Particularly memorable are Al-Noor, a Syrian refugee trying to keep his young son away from malign influence; Amy, a young woman drawn into prostitution and Rebecca whose commitment to helping others places her in danger.

 

Brave, authentic, gripping, The Chemist is a great addition to the British crime writing canon. It is also just the beginning of Idris Khan’s story, as he features in Dhand’s new book, The Kingpin, due out in July.

 

Lea Ypi – Indignity: A Life Reimagined

 

Indignity is not, strictly speaking, a novel. Author Lea Ypi describes it as a re-imagined telling of her grandmother’s life story in Ottoman Salonica and in pre-Second World War and then communist Albania. This reimagined approach, involving detailed dialogue between characters real and imagined, led me to include Ypi’s book in a list of fiction reads.

 

She began researching this story after seeing a photograph on social media of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the French Alps in 1941. This was despite having been told that all evidence of her younger days had been destroyed during the early part of Albania’s communist period. Intrigued, she began researching her family history in archives opened to the public following the fall of the old regime in the 1990s.  

Leman is portrayed as a resilient, talented, determined woman who manages to survive some of the most turbulent events of the 20^th century. Her story takes place against the backdrop of forced population exchanges between Greece and Turkey, the Italian and German occupations of Albania during the Second World War, the deportation of Salonica’s Jews, and the establishment and collapse of one of the world’s most repressive communist regimes. Historical characters also appear, including communist leader Enver Hoxha and Albania’s first and last monarch – King Zog. Real life British spy Vandeleur Robinson also features in the story. 

 

The “fictionalised” chapters are used to develop characters and demonstrate changing political moods and allegiances, and to show how historical events impact and are reacted to by Leman. They are interspersed with the author’s experiences in various archives as she searches for the truth about her grandmother. Ypi also introduces us to Leman's social milieu – that of writers, artists, politicians, revolutionaries and socialites from different backgrounds. Many were learned, multi-lingual people of various ethnicities and religions, representing a culture that no longer exists.

 

Women feature strongly in the story, some of them breaking long-held taboos and customs, but others fall prey to them. Her feminist aunt, Selma, for instance, commits suicide rather than go through with an arranged and unwanted marriage. This act highlights the meaning behind the book’s title, a refusal to surrender to the indignity of a forced existence. Indignity matches the sharp observation of Ypi’s acclaimed first book, Free, (so good I’ve read it twice) and consolidates her position as a major talent in modern biographical writing.

 

Ben Markovits - The Rest of Our Lives

 

Tom Layward, a 55-year-old law professor, drives his daughter to Pittsburgh to start university, then rather than heading home to his wife in New York, heads west. He spends several days visiting his brother, his son, an old girlfriend, eating at roadside diners and playing basketball with strangers. 

The background to this unplanned road trip is that twelve years earlier, his wife Amy, had an affair and Tom had resolved to leave her once their children had grown up. After dropping his daughter, he remembers this promise to himself and takes off. 

 

The trip forces him to confront problems at work, hidden health issues (which will later assume greater importance), an unsatisfactory relationship with his son, and to confront various other disappointments. He sums all of this up when describing his marriage, saying: “What we obviously had, even when things smoothed over, was a C-minus marriage, which makes it pretty hard to score much higher than a B overall on the rest of your life.” How is he to face his remaining years?

 

Tom is disappointed with life but is still likeable. He finds it easier to make connections with strangers rather than to communicate with close family and old friends. This may be because some of those he meets in bars, diners and on basketball courts, are also looking for something from their lives although they don’t quite know what. These and other characters are well-drawn, including his wife Amy, who makes several appearances in the book, has her own disappointments and is not written as a minor character.

 

Basketball features largely in this story. We learn that he was once a player (as was the author) and planned to write a book on the sport. Whilst on the road he decides to resuscitate this project and to this end, makes notes and collects anecdotes from strangers, but admits to himself that the book will never be written. This involves the use of a few “techie” basketball words. Look them up or don’t – I didn’t but this did not impact on my enjoyment. Tom’s challenge is to come to terms with past failures and to embrace his remaining years with hope.

 

The Rest of Our Lives was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

 

Rahul Bhattacharya – Railsong

 

Charu is the daughter of an inter-caste marriage; her father, a railway worker, renounced his Brahmin status and family name to marry a woman of lower social standing. He becomes involved in left-wing political activism which forces the family to flee to the safety of a tribal village, making the first of many moves and journeys that will chart Charu’s life.

 

Railsong describes a double journey, one physical, the other personal. The former tracks her moving from Bihar to Bombay, as well as travelling across the country to fulfil her duties as a welfare officer for the Indian Railways. The latter deals with the sexism and opposition she encounters from more senior male colleagues. It also charts her emotional growth as she forms friendships, deals with office politics and eventually marries. Her story is one of transience and evolution, living in temporary accommodation, buffeted by events in the lives of others and by rapid change in a newly independent country. 

 

The passage of time is marked by the ten-yearly census in which Charu notes the rapidly expanding population and is conscious of her “smallness” set against such vast numbers. Historical events anchor the timeline – the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi; the demolition of the Babri Masjid and various strikes and protest movements. 

 

The role and position of women in Indian society is a constant theme of the book. We see an aunt condemned to a life of servitude when she becomes a widow. When Charu's mother dies, the aunt is expected to move in with the family, to cook, clean and care for them. The possibility of her re-marrying or living independently is unthinkable. In contrast, Animesh, Charu’s father, is pressured to re-marry. These themes culminate in Charu’s wedding. Breaking with tradition, she chooses a love marriage. Already controversial, her entry into a Gujarati family brings new challenges – shared faith but different traditions, food and language.

 

Though she continues to work, she faces hostility from her conservative in-laws, who oppose her independence. Her husband, although supportive, is unable to stand up to his parents. He advises her that she must: “dissolve like sugar in milk,” giving up her own identity to blend-in and make the household run smoothly.

 

Railsong tells the story of one woman’s resilience, as she refuses to “dissolve” into her surroundings or surrender to the oppressive and unreasonable expectations of others.  Charu sets her personal struggle against that of a newly independent country as it tries to balance tradition with modernity. Bhattacharya has an engaging style, with well-drawn, believable characters and superb historical and social contextualisation, making this epic double-journey a moving, irresistible addition to modern Indian fiction.

 

Megha Majumdar – A Guardian and a Thief

 

Megha Majumdar’s second novel, like its predecessor, is set in her home city of Kolkata. Described as a moral thriller, the story takes place a few years in the future as law and order begins to break down, and the population struggles with flooding and extreme heat.

 

Ma, her two-year old daughter Mishti, and her elderly father (referred to as Dadu), plan to leave India to join her husband who is already settled in the USA. They have their passports and visas ready but shortly before their departure date lose everything in a burglary. Ma then sets out to recover or replace her documents, triggering a series of events that lead to a shocking denouement.

 

One of the key themes of the book is an examination of human responses to adversity. Dadu loves the city and the kindness and human connections it was once known for. He exemplifies this through giving precious cold water to a rickshaw driver. But kindness may only last so long in extreme situations, and we also see him stealing an orange from a starving child to feed his own granddaughter. 

 

The other main character is Boomba, a young man who leaves his village to find work and to support his parents and little brother. He finds a series of jobs but like Ma, he too meets disaster and turns to crime, including theft. The reader may wish to consider how society views Boomba’s stealing to help his family survive, against that of Dadu who despite the hard times, is still much better-off. For both of them, love and desperation blur the lines between right and wrong. 

 

The story is interspersed with telephone calls between Ma and her husband in the USA. Neither of them tells the full story of their condition and situation, preferring to keep the truth to themselves, hoping to resolve their mounting problems rather than to reveal them.

 

Majumdar’s first novel, A Burning, became a New York Times best seller and was also shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction. It was my favourite book of 2020. Repeating success with a second novel is always a challenge, but I read A Guardian and a Thief in two sittings, anxious to know the outcome of Ma’s and Boomba’s struggle for survival. The book has also received critical acclaim and a Carnegie award. 

It would be interesting to know what you think of these selections, or to hear about what you’ve been reading recently. Let me know in the comments!

A single boy - a postcard from Odisha.

When I arrived in Raghurajpur, the dancers were already applying make-up in preparation for their performance. All four were dressed in silk saris and traditional jewellery, including a tiara-like item, known as a mukut. Nothing unusual perhaps, except that three of the four dancers were male and just one a teenage girl. I was warmly welcomed and told to take as many pictures as I wanted.

Gotipua is a traditional Odissi dance performed by boys. The term itself comes from the Odia words, goti, (meaning single) and pua (meaning boy). Previously, female temple dancers known as maharanis or devadasis, performed these dances. During the colonial period, the collapse of old social systems and the decline of royal patronage caused the deterioration and eventual criminalisation of the devadasi system, which had seen young girls married to temple deities and working as temple servants.

“We have toured in Europe and even performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London, but the covid period caused many problems. Despite this, we are devoted to preserving our dance and culture,” said Sri Laxman Maharaja, leader of the troupe and accomplished dancer and musician. His sons and grandchildren also perform and together with students drawn from surrounding villages, keep Gotipua alive. Many of the fifty-five students currently studying under him come from less well-off families. They train every day, first in the early morning before school, and then again in the evening. They also receive food and accommodation - an important, practical help for those from poorer families.

Two of the boys, aged ten and thirteen, began talking to me in a mixture of Hindi and English. Their own language is Odia, but both learn Hindi at school and the older boy was also studying English. They asked me about my work. I showed them one of my books, they examined it closely, commenting and asking questions: “Where is Cuba?”, “These women in Myanmar look like the tribal people in Odisha”, and, in response to a picture of a Kolkata chaiwalla - “Do you like chai?” I confirmed that I most definitely do like chai and a few moments later a cupful was produced for me.

As their preparation continued, they helped each other tie their long hair into elaborate knots, completed aspects of each other’s make-up and checked each other’s clothes. Once ready, they made their way to a raised open-air platform where the guru and his two older sons waited cross-legged, instruments ready.

They performed three dances combining vigorous, tandava (masculine) elements,  and more graceful lasya (feminine) movements and poses. They also sang while performing, the guru beating time to the music. Afterwards, I was invited to the family home where some of the students also live and where there is a small rehearsal hall on the first floor. At the rear of the house, the family maintains a gaushala, a shelter for fourteen cows. The obligatory and very welcome chai, served soon after my arrival, was made with milk from the same animals.

You might also like Beads of the Bonda or Holy Food - both in the Postcard from Odisha series

Follow me on Instagram @adrianyekkes

Unfiltered - A postcard from Odisha

Almost everything is sold in the weekly market in Chatikona – fruit, vegetables, dried fish, clothes, electrical goods, haircuts, financial services, and dark, thick-veined, air-dried tobacco leaves. Locals buy the leaves either to chew, or to make into large homemade cigarettes or cheroots, which can be five to eight inches in length. These cheroots are called a sutta in the Chatikona area or a pikka in other parts of Odisha and in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

The pungent, earthy, aroma drew me to a tobacco vendor’s stall, where a group of women sat on the floor, preparing the leaves they had purchased. Some were already smoking and after taking a few drags, put the lit end  of the sutta into their mouths to extinguish it, before placing it behind an ear, in their hair or clothing to return to later. 

Ponala was one of the group and was about to smoke. Her nose rings identified her as a member of the Desia Kondh community, part of the wider Kondh group of the tribes of Odisha. They live mainly on the lowlands and foothills, undertake settled farming and of all the Kondh, are the group whose lifestyles are closest to that of their non-tribal neighbours. Many now follow Hinduism or Christianity, or combine one of these with their traditional animist beliefs.

Ponala agreed to be photographed smoking her sutta.  She untied her matches from the corner of her sari-like clothing, lit-up, took an initial drag  and then continued to inhale and exhale, the smoke drifting upwards partially concealing her face. As she showed no sign of wanting to move on, I continued working with the camera, capturing dozens of images and recording the whole process from start to finish. A little group of her friends came over, intrigued, and began to call out encouragement in the local language as well as: “chalo!” (let’s go!) in Hindi. 

When she had finished, I asked her age. She shrugged, raised her hands and said “no idea,” before letting out a smoker’s laugh and heading back to the tobacco stall.

 

You might also like Beads of the Bonda

Beads of the Bonda - A postcard from Odisha.

 

“I don’t feel well, so I’m not drinking today,” said Adi, one of a group of Bonda tribeswomen who had agreed to participate in a short photo shoot at the weekly market in Onukudelli, Odisha.

The Bonda women are immediately recognisable. Only partially dressed, they wear a ringa – a short piece of cloth around their waists, while their torsos are covered in a string of colourful beads, as are their shaved heads. Around their necks hang heavy bead necklaces and aluminium bands called khagla and their arms are lined with bangles. When leaving their villages, some of the women wear simple dresses or wrap themselves in a piece of blue cloth for modesty.

The reason for this unique appearance is found in the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. Some Bonda women are said to have mocked the goddess Sita as she was bathing.  Enraged, she cursed them to eternal nakedness and to giving up their hair. When they pleaded for forgiveness, she softened and conceded the waist cloth and beaded jewellery. 

 

The Bonda are one of the oldest and most culturally distinctive tribal communities in India. They live mainly in hilly areas near Lamptaput and in the Malkangiri district of Odisha. They are believed to have come from Africa, possibly as long ago as 60,000 years. Bonda society is matriarchal, and women dominate and are responsible for the tribe’s economic activity. They are also, in all senses, the senior partner in marriage, taking a boy five to ten years younger as a partner. It is then the woman's role to raise him, and his to look after her when she is older. 

They practise shifting cultivation, growing paddy, millets and maize as well as gathering forest produce. The Bonda men are known for being skilled marksmen and in the past would visit markets carrying bows and arrows. The women make small items of jewellery, decorative items and some textile items which they offer for sale at Onukudelli. 

 

There are perhaps only 25,000 Bonda in total. Life expectancy is low, and the tribe has been identified as being at risk of extinction. Their unique culture and way of life is also threatened by de-forestation, economic poverty and pressure to assimilate into the Odia language. Several of the tribal communities, including the Bonda, are known to consume significant amount of desi (country) alcohol. At the Onukudelli market, numerous vendors sell mahua, a spirit made from the fermented, sun-dried flowers of the tree of the same name. This mildly sweet alcohol was banned by the British in 1892, but several states have since legalised it and there is even a bottled, premium band nowadays. 

Except for Adi, the women involved in the photoshoot drank throughout the time we spent together – some of them from glasses and some from the dried gourd seen in the photograph above. 

You might also like Holy food - a postcard from Odisha.

Holy food - A postcard from Odisha.

Bhubaneshwar’s Ananta Vasudeva Hindu Temple, built in the 13^th century, is unique in that it is the only one in the old town that is dedicated to Lord Vishnu. Like many Hindu temples, it provides a range of services, including the preparation and distribution of food known as prasad or in Odisha, abdaha. It is the same food served at the Puri Jagannath Temple.

 

Every day, hundreds of male workers are involved in the delivery, preparation, cooking and then sale of the food. They are drawn from families who have fulfilled these roles for generations and live in the vicinity of the temple. The abdaha is cooked in the temple kitchens and placed in clay pots before it is first offered to the gods and then served at nominal cost to devotees in the adjacent Bhaga Bazar. 

 

All the food is fully vegetarian and is also made without onions, garlic, potatoes and tomatoes which are not considered Indian in origin. Dishes include kanika, a sweet fragrant rice, yellow in colour and flavoured with clove, cinnamon and clarified ghee. Dalma is a slow cooked lentil and vegetable stew made with very little oil and besara is made with mustard paste, fresh grated coconut and assorted vegetables with a spice mix and a fried crunchy coconut topping. Sweet dishes are also prepared. Everything is served on banana leaves.  

 

The workers carry the clay pots, either singly on their shoulders, or with several loaded into large baskets and carried on their heads. Everything is transported at great speed as the workers move between different parts of the temple, from delivery point, to kitchen, to the offering to the deities and then to the place of consumption. This labour begins early in the morning and goes on until the food is served between 12.30 and 2pm daily. Amongst those eating are numerous priests, many of whom will have earlier carried out rituals beside the water tank opposite the temple, to mark the death anniversaries of relatives or for other purposes. Hindus come to them with offerings and to be guided through the appropriate pooja (prayers). Some pay for the priests to eat at the temple afterwards.

It is forbidden for outsiders to touch the food during preparation, or to enter the kitchens. If these stipulations are contravened, or if food is spilt, it will be considered contaminated and disposed of. Arrangements can be made for delivery to other locations and small vehicles line the road, ready to fulfil this purpose.

You might also like Phnom Penh - three stories from the alley