(by G Waugh)
1. Rishi Moolam by Jayakanthan
Jayakanthan’s take on the Oedipus Complex just blew me away. I don’t know why I have this obsession with small books. This is easily the greatest novella ever written in Tamil.
2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The second place is taken by the longest book I have ever read in my life. The longest book ever spans the shortest narrative duration. The whole story takes place between the years 1951 to 1953. A vivid description of the cross section of post Independence society, with peripheral characters suddenly taking over the main narrative and vice versa. The enthralling aspect of the novel was how unremarkable these lives were without a semblance of dramatic heavy-lifting, yet how endearing all of the characters were and how unconsciously people change and how some people even after undergoing numerous travails remain themselves undergoing little or no change. This is one of the novels which I will go back after at least a decade. The book can be called India’s literary answer to Richard Linklater brand cinema .
3. Pol Pot by Philip Short
The finest ever biography of a nation narrated from the perspective of a cold blooded yet epoch making dictator in Pol Pot, the most ruthless of 20th century tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, etc. The narrative is so lucid bolstered by a solid literary style and a wonderful eye for detail. A strong recommendation.
4. Gene by Siddharth Mukherjee
A fantastic work of non-fiction that manages to transcend the limits of its genre and become a lively story of its own. The theme is genetics, a subject that becomes more and more captivating as you venture deeper into it under the influence of the sure footed Mukherjee.
5. Adults In The Room by Yanis Varfouakis
It sort of appalls me to note that this book has ended up languishing beneath four other books in the year’s list. Such a riveting read, written by a super sincere political revolutionary who reluctantly takes over a ministerial position in the ambitious Syriza government leading Greece during its worst ever financial crisis. Just grab the book and begin your journey into the most secret caverns of international finance right into the powercenter of global decision making. The honesty of Varfouakis sucks you into the narrative and when you come out, you feel completely transformed, wiser and yet totally confounded about the way the world works around you. Soon to be made into a movie by Costa Gavras.
6. Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Lives up to the title. Reads like a full blown conspiracy theory but oozes so much truth and squelches all your well defined beliefs in everyday social phenomena. This 600 page indictment of laissez faire capitalism reinterprets international history in such stark and telling detail and blows other mundane perspectives into smithereens. This book could have taken one among the top three places in the year’s list but its final place shows the quality of the list.
7. Love In The Time of Cholera by GG Marquez
Only after you plunge into the depths of Marquez you find how indistinguishable the aesthetics of Prose and Poetry are. You can discern the fine yet elemental links that show the evolution of poetry from prose when you wallow calmly inside the turbulent waters of Marquezian seas that rise and subside in totally unpredictable intervals and leave you fully refreshed and revitalised once you reach the shore. This mind blowing epic of love and waiting could have fathered the modern love stories of the Gautham Menon genre.
8. Oru Nadigai Nadagam Parkiral by Jayakanthan
Jayakanthan’s meditation on the ideals of love, the societal conceptions of the same and how difficult it is to reconcile the two. The conflict between the confused, yet renowned ‘intellectual’ Ranga and the uneducated yet super refined Kalyani who come together romantically and eventually decide to part under circumstances of their own making keeps throwing difficult questions that boggle the minds of intellectuals, poets and lovers. But Kalyani, the central character keeps it simple. She gives simple and indisputable answers to all of those difficult questions. She is the embodiment of everything that is ethereal in love- undying, headlong commitment that stands easily on an unshakable platform of trust.
9. JJ Sila Kuripugal by Sundara Ramaswamy
This is nothing but a painstakingly compiled biography of a fictional character – JJ. This work could be compared to what Woody Allen had achieved with Zelig. The novel’s form is so astonishingly new that the content -the complexity of the protagonist pales slightly in comparison. I felt a bit distant with the protagonist but I am sure I will get back to the novel once again in future.
10. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
A modern day epic that pits two protagonists against each other from completely different strata and geography, following them from birth till the end of their lives. It is a nice and a fairly unsentimental read that moves at a healthy pace thanks to a no-nonsense Archer. The heavy-duty scenes do not work and probably Archer knows this and hence keeps them to a bare minimum. But the fleeting imagination of Archer and the consistency of the writing keeps
you invested.
Honorable Mentions:
● Oru Ilakiyavadhiyin Arasiyal Anubavangal by Jayakanthan
● Conversations with Mani Ratnam by Baradwaj Rangan
● Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
● Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
● A Feast of Vultures by Josy Joseph
Baradwaj Rangan 
Eswar
January 10, 2020
Thanks G Waugh for sharing the list and the notes.
I felt ‘JJ Sila Kurippugal’ was one-of-a-kind novel in Tamil. I am intending to read it again at some point.
I found Sidhartha Mukherjee’s ‘The Emperor of all Maladies’ fascinating. I am yet to read The Gene’, but I enjoyed this post (Thought this was an excerpt from ‘The Gene’, but not sure now):
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/breakthroughs-in-epigenetics
Happy Reading in 2020 as well. 🙂
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AdhithyaKR
January 11, 2020
I really enjoyed “The Gene” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It was solid writing with some memorable lines apart from being really informative on the subject. I need to check out the other books in your list. They seem interesting. Five books that I really enjoyed this year:
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson: A whimsical comedy about an incompetent narrator that explores political correctness and the consequences of the Holocaust. Riotously funny and thought-provoking at the same time.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami: A haunting story about love, memories and suicide. It’s a slightly disturbing but beautiful read nevertheless.
Fictions by Borges: Contains some delightful short stories like “The Library of Babel”, about a library that contains every possible 400 page book in the world. One story reminded me of “JJ – Sila kurippugal” as it analyzes the body of writings of a fictional character.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes: Written through the voice of a mentally retarded man who gradually becomes super-intelligent, you get to witness the transformation of the man through his own mind. Psychologically revealing and deeply sad… One book that everybody must read.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess: The book is definitely better than the movie in this case. The book is written in a fictional language with constructed words mixed with normal English and though it seems like nonsense in the beginning, it’s thrilling to learn a language in the span of a hundred pages. When you couple that with a chilling plot combining anarchy, drug use and violence, it’s a book like no other.
Other suggestions: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, Volga to Ganga by Rahul Sankrityayan,The Difficulty of being Good by Gurcharan Das, The Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton, Doing Justice by Preet Bharara
Wish more people write about the books they read! Thanks. 🙂
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Madan
January 11, 2020
Nice to see that the list closed out with a fabled, bestselling paperback from the master storyteller. Haven’t read any of the others though many of those titles do interest me. My favourite book that I read last year (and a book I enjoyed more than any in a long time) was Reluctant Fundamentalist. It was like reading a chapter from a younger version of me whom I had forgotten about. The one who in college asked wtf was US doing all these years in the Gulf when a collegemate told me about the innocent people who died in 9/11. Strangely enough, the politics here too have reached a point where I am reverting to that self, distrustful of mainstream majoritarian narratives.
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venkat1926
January 11, 2020
saw an Iranian film years back. the child was separated from mother because of inter-ethnic love affair. later mother was arrested on charge of murder and the investigating officer rapes her. twins were born. the twins try to find out their father and to their horror find that the investigating officer was that separated child. sorry forgot the name of the film. is this not Oedipus Complex.
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nikkie1602
January 11, 2020
Kafka on the Shore is one of those books… whose mysteries make complete sense yet are also incomprehensible…Nakata is one of the most endearing and tragic characters. A book that demands a revisit every few years…
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rahultyagi
January 11, 2020
spoiler for anyone who hasn’t seen Incendies
venkat1926, you seem to be describing the amazing “Incendies”, which isn’t Iranian, but Canadian in primarily French and Arabic.If so, you just spoiled the movie for everyone!
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