Nita Berry
2 (ENGLISH) by Paro Anand Scholastic India, 2017, 164 pp., 595
November 2017, volume 41, No 11

2 is an extraordinary 2-in-one graphic novel, written mainly over the internet across 3 continents—between the two co-authors Paro Anand (Delhi) and Orjan Persson (Gotland, Sweden) who wrote in Swedish, and translator Nina Winternheimer (Los Angeles, USA), his daughter. The authors met at a workshop in Goa and decided to write an ‘easy-to-read-book’, in great demand by teenagers today. The result is, in Paro’s words, this ‘weird and wild book’. This innovative book is written in two halves, each by one author. You have to turn the book around to read the second half. The graphics in the two halves are by two different illustrators as well, in different colours. But the stories of each half intertwine, like the lives of their main characters. Paro’s story is about Ganga, a sensitive, repressed teenager whose parents force him to go on a school trip to Goa. It’s his first visit to the sea, and this introvert tries to shun his loud, bullying classmates all the time.

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