Literary Region Nominations & Vote • April 2018

[sun surfer]

Help us select what the MR Literary Club will read in April 2018!


The category for this month is:

Region
South Asia (as chosen by vote)


Detailed nominating and voting guidelines can be found here.

Simply put, we first begin with a one-day vote to determine this month's region. Voting will close exactly one day from this post and each person has FIVE votes to use. This is the last region-choosing vote of this cycle, and the eligible regions not chosen will all be available to nominate from in the June Region Finale.

After, nominations will open for four days and each person may nominate up to two literary selections which will go automatically to the vote. Voting then opens for four days and each person votes by post, receives a number of votes equal to the number of nominations minus one and may give each nomination up to two votes. Any questions, feel free to ask.

We hope that you will read the selection with the club and join in the discussion.

Spoiler:

-Previously chosen regions currently ineligible:
Latin America
Central Asia, East Europe & Russia
Canada & the U.S.A.
North Africa & The Middle East
Southeast Asia
Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain & France
North & Central Europe
The Korean Peninsula, Mongolia & China

The floor is now open!

*

Region voting is closed. Final results-

• Sub Saharan Africa
  Votes- 3
• Southeast Europe
  Votes- 2
• The South Pacific
  Votes- 0
• South Asia
  Votes- 4
• Japan
  Votes- 1
• Ireland & The U.K.
  Votes- 0

Nominations are closed. Voting is closed. Final results-

• Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, India
  Post . Goodreads . 528 Pages . Votes 4
  
  
• Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid, Pakistan
  Post . Goodreads . 279 Pages . Votes 1
  
  
• Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai, Sri Lanka
  Post . Goodreads . 383 Pages . Votes 2
  
  
• Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand, India
  Post . Goodreads . 170 Pages . Votes 1
  
  
• A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam, Bangladesh
  Post . Goodreads . 283 Pages . Votes 2

[sun surfer]

Since this is the last region month with only one region chosen, my tactic is to vote for the regions I've read the least from. That equals:

2 votes for Sub Saharan Africa
2 votes for South Asia

For my last vote, I think I've read less books from Southeast Europe specifically for the lit club than from Japan, but over my life I've read less books from Japan, so my last vote is:

1 vote for Japan

[Bookworm_Girl]

Tough choices!

2 votes for Southeast Europe
2 votes for South Asia
1 vote for Sub Saharan Africa

[sun surfer]

Region voting is over and the winner is:

South Asia!

This includes India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka.

Nominations are now open for four days.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Should be an interesting region to explore!

[bfisher]

I would like to nominate Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...Sea_of_Poppies

[sun surfer]

I'm definitely interested in that book, bfisher. I can already tell this is going to be a hard month to choose!

For my nominations, I put forth:

Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid, Pakistan
Goodreads / 279 pages

When Daru Shezad is fired from his banking job in Lahore, he begins a decline that plummets the length of this sharply drawn, subversive tale. Before long, he can't pay his bills, and he loses his toehold among Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite. Daru descends into drugs and dissolution, and, for good measure, he falls in love with the wife of his childhood friend and rival, Ozi—the beautiful, restless Mumtaz.

Desperate to reverse his fortunes, Daru embarks on a career in crime, taking as his partner Murad Badshah, the notorious rickshaw driver, populist, and pirate. When a long-planned heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a murder he may or may not have committed. The uncertainty of his fate mirrors that of Pakistan itself, hyped on the prospect of becoming a nuclear player even as corruption drains its political will.

Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a contemporary Pakistan as far more vivid and disturbing than the exoticized images of South Asia familiar to most of the West. This debut novel establishes Mohsin Hamid as a writer of substance and imagination.

Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai, Sri Lanka
Goodreads / 383 pages

Set among the upper classes in the gracious, repressive and complex world of 1920s Ceylon (Sri Lanka), this evocative novel tells the story of two people who must determine if it is possible to pursue personal happiness without compromising the happiness of others. A young teacher, Annalukshmi, whose splintered family attempts to arrange an appropriate marriage for her, must decide whether the independence she craves will doom her to a life without love and companionship. It is also the story of Balendran who, respectably married, must suppress-or confront-the secret desires for men that threaten to throw his life into chaos. With sensuous atmosphere and vivid prose, this masterfully plotted novel re-creates a world where a beautiful veneer of fragrant gardens and manners hides social, personal, and political issues still relevant today.

There's about a day left for nominations.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Great choices! I plan to submit my nominations tonight. Sea of Poppies has been on my TBR for ages. I just read Hamid's latest novel, Exit West, in February and would read more of his works.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I nominate Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand. Published in 1935.

From Amazon referring to the Penguin Classics edition available as an ebook:

Mulk Raj Anand's extraordinarily powerful story of an Untouchable in India's caste system, with a new introduction by Ramachandra Guha, author of Gandhi.

Bakha is a proud and attractive young man, yet none the less he is an Untouchable - an outcast in India's caste system. It is a system that is even now only slowly changing and was then as cruel and debilitating as that of apartheid. Into this vivid re-creation of one day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, Anand pours a vitality, fire and richness of detail that earn his place as one of the twentieth century's most important Indian writers.

'One of the most eloquent and imaginative works to deal with this difficult and emotive subject' Martin Seymour-Smith

'It recalled to me very vividly the occasions I have walked 'the wrong way' in an Indian city, and it is a way down which no novelist has yet taken me' E. M. Forster.

Author biography from Goodreads:

Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an international readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of being classic works of modern Indian English literature, noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and their analyses of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He is also notable for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English

[Bookworm_Girl]

My second nomination is A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam.

From Goodreads;

Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, A Golden Age is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith and unexpected heroism. The first volume in a planned trilogy.

As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.

But none of the guests at Rehana's party can foresee what will happen in the days and months ahead. For this is 1971 in East Pakistan, a country on the brink of war. And this family's life is about to change forever.

Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, A Golden Age is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith and unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone—from student protesters to the country's leaders, from rickshaw'wallahs to the army's soldiers—must make choices. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma. This is the first volume of a planned trilogy.

The author's bio:

Tahmima Anam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1975. She was raised in Paris, New York City, and Bangkok. Renowned satirist Abul Mansur Ahmed is her grandfather. After studying at Mount Holyoke College and Harvard University, she earned a PhD in Social Anthropology.

Her first novel, A Golden Age, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Costa First Novel Prize, and was the winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. It was translated into 22 languages.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by bfisher

I would like to nominate Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...Sea_of_Poppies

To help out here is the info for this book from Goodreads:

At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton.

Amitav Ghosh is one of India's best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances, The Hungry Tide. His most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, is the first volume of the Ibis Trilogy.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford and his first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986.

He has taught at many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, the City University of New York and Harvard. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy.

[sun surfer]

Great group of nominations. I’ll collect the nominations and start the vote when I can get to a computer later tonight, or as soon as I have time to do it on my phone (it takes a lot linger on the phone). Until then nominations are still open.

[sun surfer]

Nominations are closed and voting is now open!

Voting will close exactly four days from this post.

Each person has FOUR votes to use.

[Bookworm_Girl]

A great selection of regions and plot lines!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Can't vote for them all! Tough month.

2 - Sea of Poppies
1 - Cinnamon Gardens
1 - Untouchable