Leon Uris is my literary equivalent of comfort food – I find myself going back to his familiar pages after every 7-8 books. It also helps that most of his books take place in the era I am interested in, so it’s like visiting my favourite place all over again. The book I revisited this […]
WW2 may have been won by the Allies, but even today the scribes of the victors cannot stop themselves from paying backhanded compliments to their erstwhile enemies. They tell stories where the Allies win in the end, but throughout the story it is the adversary who is shown to be smarter, fitter, more moral (or […]
No, I haven’t misspelt the title, nor have I confused the author with someone else. I stumbled upon this book while searching for another one (not The Girl on the Train). The reasons I guess this book isn’t known more widely is it was translated into English from Afrikaans in 2015; and the publishers’ bid […]
World War 2, by dint of being fought at a time when technological advancements made it possible to document, share and preserve information more easily, has been more ingrained in the collective memories of people than WWI has. In terms of the scale of people killed and the number of countries involved too, WWI has […]
The 1960s and 70s were the heydays of thriller writers. Agatha Christie, Frederick Forsyth, Dick Francis and a lot of others were the toast of thriller readers everywhere. And into this scene, in 1978, stepped Kenneth Martin Follett (more popularly known as Ken Follett) with his immensely successful The Eye of the Needle. How successful? […]
There are some books that simply seize you, and the echoes of the words linger with you long after you have turned the last page; The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is one such book. The very first time I read it, it left me with a lump in my throat for days, and every […]
Battle Cry may have been the very first book I read in this genre, but The Guns of Navarone was the first ever war movie I watched as a kid, and the book has always been a favourite of mine. It is the source of my love for fast paced, over the top thrillers with […]
As far as historic fiction goes, Mila 18 is for me THE definitive book in the genre. The story is based on a real-life incident (the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943) and is the only book where I as a reader identify with not one but two characters, with both of them ideologically on opposing […]
Band of Brothers (full title Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle Nest) was one of the rare occasions where I saw the TV adaptation first and then read the book. And though the TV series is in this case superior in terms of visuals and the storytelling […]
Battle Cry holds a special place in my heart. It was the first book I ever read from the Historic Fiction genre and has been instrumental in shaping my love and interest in it. I was then studying World War 2 in my History lessons, and the name Leon Uris kept popping up when my […]
War Crows 