novel

In his latest novel, American novelist Paul Auster delves into the life of Seymour Baumgartner, a distinguished author and philosophy professor, on the verge of retirement. Baumgartner’s life has been shaped by his love for his wife, Anna, who has been an integral part of his existence. Her death means he now has to navigate his seventies without her. Despite her physical absence, Anna’s presence continues to permeate Baumgartner’s existence and he constantly reminiscences about their 40-year relationship. He is haunted…

The first time I read Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending was way back in 2016 on a flight from Delhi to Bangalore. By the time I retired to my nondescript hotel room for the night, I had some hundred pages left, and despite an early alarm for the next day, I stayed up till I reached the novel’s intensely devastating end – an end that reverberated in my consciousness for a long time. The Sense of an Endingwon the Booker Prize in 2011 and became a commercial and literary success, and rightly so, for it crushes…

Where did the germ for this novel – a murder set around Karwa Chauth – originate? How did ACP Bhavani make it to this story? Was it intentional to make him a part of the plot instead of having a new character deal with the case?  Author Anuja Chauhan (Courtesy HarperCollins) Karwa Chauth is such a polarising topic! Is it about smug married women flexing on single ones who haven’t managed to “snag a man” yet? Is it about a wife’s pure love for her partner? Is it just about aping whatever Bollywood does? Or is it…

In Irish writer Kathleen MacMahon’s fourth novel, Cassie and Christo, two half-siblings, who live on opposite sides of the globe, have centred their lives on their jobs in an effort to forget their traumatic past. They are attracted back to Galway, Ireland, to reminisce about a wonderful childhood summer, the final one before their mother died, when a big storm there makes the news. However, as they go, they come upon memories of a summer that was considerably less joyful and had ended in tragedy. They are then forced…

The Sudowrite Story Engine is a tool that's designed to help you finish, finalize, or actually generate an entire novel from scratch. It uses the power of OpenAI's natural language model aAI (the same one that power versions of ChatGPT) to generate text for a real novel. It's not perfect, and you will absolutely need to edit it — a lot. But it's a fantastic tool for creating the bones of a story, or building something more on top of that. Here's how to use Sudowrite's Story Engine to write your own novel. Note:…

ByTara Bhattacharya, New Delhi The Wish is a novel that takes you through Maggie’s journey, filled with dramatic highs and lows. Maggie, as a pregnant teen, is sent off to a small town called Ocracoke. Her life is molded by her experiences there and her love for a boy named Bryce, which helps her grow into the courageous woman she is today. However, Maggie is faced with difficult news about a disheartening prognosis. But the way Maggie deals with this will touch every reader’s heart. Whenever we hear of someone…

“Rohzin” is a word that you claim to have birthed. In the novel you claim it is created when a child witnesses “the sexual indulgences of his parents”. You say that this creates a hole which turns into a disease. Is this rohzin entirely a product of your imagination, or do you have any academic or other sources that inspired it? Do all people suffer from such rohzin? Has it always existed or is it something that has emerged in new India?The word, Rohzin first appeared with the title of this novel, and I coined it from…

Douglas Stuart’s debut novel, ‘Shuggie Bain’, which won the Booker Prize 2020 last night, is the embodiment of an oxymoron. It is tender at heart yet ferocious in essence as it traces the complex relationship arc of a young boy (Shuggie Bain) and his mother (Agnes Bain), who is an alcohol addict. With its many intricate details, the novel paints a graphic and authentic picture of the 1980s’ impoverished Glasgow neighbourhood, and the deep disappointment and resentment that Agnes feels on being unable to escape it. Agnes…