BOTM Suggestions

 

Synopses of the books for those who like to have a snapshot of their contents before voting for BOTM 😀:

*The Vegetarian by Han Kang (South Korea):*
Yeong-hye decides to quit eating meat following a series of dreams, only to evoke opposition from the people around her as her act becomes rebellious against societal norms in a country like South Korea. The author is also the 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

*A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman (Israel):*
Dovaleh Greenstein, a standup comedian, invites his childhood friend Avishai Lazar, who is a retired judge now, to his show. The judge is the narrator of this story, and the audience who came expecting an evening of laughter sees the performer crumbling down before their eyes haunted by his past decisions that affected his relationships.

*Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (Poland):*
A novel set between the 17th and 21st centuries and presented in the form of numerous vignettes telling the story of various characters and explores the concept of travel interwoven with those of human body, migration, death, etc. The author is also the 2018 Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

*Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Oman):*
The story of three sisters from a village in Oman and how they go about the process of marriage in their different ways against the backdrop of a changing Oman, giving deep insight into the Omani society from its traditional to modern faces.

*The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld (Netherlands):*
Ten-year-old Jas lives her peculiar life in the family's dairy farm in the rural Netherlands, until the death of her brother shakes the family's stability and overwhelms her mental state with increasingly disturbing fantasies.

*At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop (France):*
During World War I, the Senegalese man Mademba Diop is killed in the fight between the French and the Germans. Following this, his brother Alfa Ndiaye repeatedly crosses into the enemy lines to kill a German and bring a severed hand every time. His action was appreciated initially by his fellow soldiers, but soon they understand that he is spiralling into madness.

*Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree (India):*
An 80-year-old lady, recovering from the depression following her husband's death, decides to travel to Pakistan while the childhood trauma of the Partition still lingers in her mind. She defies conventions, shocking her family who had been thinking themselves to be more modern. The novel explores the idea of borders, between countries, religions and genders.

*Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria):*
Psychiatrist Gaustine opens a clinic to help Alzheimer's patients. Different floors of the clinic represents different decades in the past and is set up with artefacts from the past collected by the unnamed narrator by travelling across countries. Soon a conundrum arises as healthy people throng the clinic to escape the horrors of the present and seek shelter in the past.

*Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany):*
It tells about the relationship of a young student and a much older writer fuelled by a passion for art, music, and culture, nevertheless only to crumble like the collapse of East Germany, against the backdrop of which the story is set.

*Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq (India):*
A collection of 12 short stories depicting the lives of Muslim women in South India dealing with societal pressures, gender inequality, and resilience. The stories handle serious themes, but not without their share of humour and witticisms.