After a break from reading and the internet in April, I came back with renewed energy in May and read some wonderful books.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

I’ve read a few books by Arundhati Roy over the years, including her debut novel The God of Small Things and her more recent non-fiction book on Gandhi, and I was keen to read her new memoir. It’s a beautiful story about Roy’s complex relationship with her mother, who is abusive, manipulating and narcissistic but also a guide and inspiration to her. And despite it all, she loves her intensely.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

I enjoyed this novel set in a near-future Kolkata that’s collapsing under the stress of climate change. A family snags sought-after climate visas to escape to the USA, but then their passports get stolen, and their lives intersect with that of Boomba, a young man whose struggles to survive in the city make him into a thief. There were a few plot points that felt unbelievable to me, but overall it was a good read.

A Very Short History of the Israel–Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappe

This seems like an impossible assignment, to summarize such a complex history in just 160 pages. Yet Israeli historian Ilan Pappe absolutely nails it, giving a full and fair history of the Israel–Palestine conflict going back to its origins and British and Ottoman colonial times. It brings true clarity to what’s happening today, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to step outside of the present-day horror and get the full context of how we got here.

The Violence of Britishness by Nadya Ali

I’ve written on the blog about the UK’s insidious “Prevent” system and how it has tried to police the thoughts of British Muslims since 9/11. Nadya Ali’s book goes into a lot more detail and shows the damaging impact of counterterrorism policies and the UK’s hostile immigration policies more generally.

Natives of My Person by George Lamming

Barbadian writer George Lamming gives us a complex allegory of colonialism in this tale about a ship carrying a crew of settlers to a tropical island. Full review coming soon.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

I originally read this so long ago that this rereading was almost like discovering the book anew. Hemingway packs so many themes into a short, simple tale about a man trying to catch a fish.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl draws lessons from his own horrific memories of Auschwitz to tell us how to live. He says that those who survived the death camps were those who found meaning and had something to live for, while others who lost their sense of meaning didn’t last long. Then we get ideas on how to find meaning in our own, much more fortunate lives. It’s a beautiful book that I read years ago and would like to return to regularly, both for its distillation of the essence of human meaning and for its reminder that however bad things in the world seem right now, they are not even close to the horrors that Frankl lived through.

How was your reading month?

As usual, please let me know your thoughts on any of these books, or tell me what you’ve been reading and hopefully enjoying lately.