This novel—and I’m using this classification as a temporary placeholder for an increasingly unstable yet resilient genre—is about a chanced upon manuscript dated 1724 which carries the confessions of Jack Sheppard, ‘an English folk hero and jail breaker.
When in doubt of your mettle, Rimli Gupta’s book, Karno’s Daughter makes for a good litmus test. If you feel exhausted on reading it, you are a wimp, but if the trials and tribulations of Buttermilk the protagonist buoy you, there is hope for you.
Have I died and gone to Heaven,’ I wondered. ‘I have been asked to review a detective novel my most favourite reading nowadays!’ And what a novel at that! The first book published by the author, it tells a gripping story in the manner of …no, no.
In 1958, a young boy from a small town in Madhya Pradesh failed in Hindi in the school final examination, because of which he had to enrol in an agricultural college where there was no Hindi. He completed the course and taught in an agricultural college for many years after.
Memento Mori is Latin for ‘remember you must die’. The recognition of mortality and the reiteration that life is lived in the midst of death is part of an old tradition iterated in cultures across the world through music, art, poetry, philosophy and writing.
Iqbal, aka Sufi and Aabid, the author, grew up in different households in Dongri, went to the same school and faced nearly similar circumstances at home. Their lives never intersected, and they did not witness each other’s trials and tribulations. Iqbal’s father.