“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
-- Bertrand Russell
Having read my share of books in the free time I had, I thought I should aim higher and read a book by a Nobel literature laureate. I wanted to check for myself how these books were different from the normal ones and if I could read and comprehend one such book. I started off with Orhan Pamuk's book 'My name is Red'. It took some time for me to adjust to the narration style which was very novel. Each chapter was written as viewed by a different character and hence I had to switch the contexts and the perspectives at the beginning of a chapter. It was tiring, but I was beginning to get an idea of what Nobel-winning writing was about.
I picked another and this time it was 'One hundred of years of solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Turned out it was the most difficult book I ever read. Characters were entering and vanishing into the story-line with no regard to dimensions like time. It was tough to track the characters, relations, their timelines etc. and I later realized this style, called the magical realism, is something that Gabriel Garcia Marquez popularized.
Its one thing to write a simple story. Its a completely different thing to create a literary style that has never been attempted and yet write a story that makes sense and gives you the pleasure of reading a good novel. Such is the stuff Nobel writing is made of - an invention in the field of literature.
-A tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez who passed away recently!
-- Bertrand Russell
Having read my share of books in the free time I had, I thought I should aim higher and read a book by a Nobel literature laureate. I wanted to check for myself how these books were different from the normal ones and if I could read and comprehend one such book. I started off with Orhan Pamuk's book 'My name is Red'. It took some time for me to adjust to the narration style which was very novel. Each chapter was written as viewed by a different character and hence I had to switch the contexts and the perspectives at the beginning of a chapter. It was tiring, but I was beginning to get an idea of what Nobel-winning writing was about.
I picked another and this time it was 'One hundred of years of solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Turned out it was the most difficult book I ever read. Characters were entering and vanishing into the story-line with no regard to dimensions like time. It was tough to track the characters, relations, their timelines etc. and I later realized this style, called the magical realism, is something that Gabriel Garcia Marquez popularized.
Its one thing to write a simple story. Its a completely different thing to create a literary style that has never been attempted and yet write a story that makes sense and gives you the pleasure of reading a good novel. Such is the stuff Nobel writing is made of - an invention in the field of literature.
-A tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez who passed away recently!
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