Weaving of Arachne

Beatrice and Virgil  by Yann Martel was an unsettling and disturbing read for me. The novel features the story-within-a-story narrative trope, which contributes to its disorganized appearance. The novel primarily features a play, named A 20 th -Century Shirt  written by a taxidermist who happens to be a namesake of the protagonist, Henry. Along with the play, which takes up a lion’s share of the narrative, the novel also partially features a short story by Flaubert, ‘The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator’. A 20 th -Century Shirt  which is in fact, the essence of Beatrice and Virgil  is an animal allegory featuring the eponymous characters, a donkey and a monkey, respectively. Through the “irreparable abomination” faced by animals, the taxidermist symbolises all the hatred that is directed towards certain groups by their fellow humans at regular intervals. But “the Horrors” faced by the animals explicitly refer to the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews. Beatrice...

  Midnight’s Children  by Salman Rushdie is simply an amazing phenomenon. However it would be an injustice to use the word ‘simply’ while describing this book. It is one of the most complex and enjoyable book that I have ever read. Midnight’s Children  encompasses the history, politics as well as social mores of the Indian subcontinent through 1915 to 1977. In doing so it employs all kinds of genres starting from fable, magic realism, mock epic, poetry, farce, history, autobiography, and many more. The novel shuns all the conventions of a traditional novel and employs unconventional techniques such as time shifting narrative, highly unreliable narrator in order to drive home the fact that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and history is a mere narrative which may very well have alternative versions. The novel is highly symbolic and unpredictable. You can never guess what will be thrown at your face in the very next line thereby echoing life in its unpredictabilit...