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I first heard about Osamu Dazai on the internet, BookTube in particular, a few years back when the internet was suddenly abuzz with discussions about his books, especially his melancholy way of writing. I learnt quite a lot about his life from BookTubers, particularly his self-destructive ways, and it intrigued me. I googled him and read whatever I could find on him. Dazai’s life was traumatic and fascinating, and he lived life on the edge. 

Dazai was the sixth son of a wealthy politician. He was one of the best fiction authors of Japan during the second world war. Dazai lived a relatively short life, ending it by suicide in 1948, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript titled ‘Goodbye’. His novel ‘No Longer Human’ was one of the more popular ones among his works but I could only get my hands on ‘The Setting Sun’. The book is short, at just a little over a 100 pages, and is set in post-World War II Japan. 

The narrator of the story is 29-year-old Kazuko, a young woman from an aristocratic family that is slowly perishing. Kazuko is struggling with her mother’s declining health and her brother Naoji’s addiction. She’s wondering where her life is headed while trying to come to terms with what’s happening around her. The book is short but there’s a lot to unpack, especially since it questions what it means to be human in a changing world. The book, though written 79 years ago, feels as relevant today as it was back then. 

It’s believed that Dazai’s writing takes inspiration from his turbulent life. A sense of gloom pervaded his life and his works too have a dark and moody undertone. Dazai showed a lot of potential for writing from an early age but the sudden suicide of his favorite author Ryunosuke Akutagawa affected him and he spiraled into self-doubt and depression. He tried to commit suicide, ran away with a geisha, and became affiliated with the banned Japanese Communist Party. He even stopped going to university. 

His family ultimately disowned him and it was only after he tried to kill himself for the second time that his family agreed to take care of his finances if he completed his degree. He got married but his wife cheated on him with his best friend. They later divorced after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He married another woman but also cheated on her with someone else, though he ultimately left them both. Dazai suffered from mental health problems and alcoholism and died by suicide on the fourth attempt.

You get a glimpse of the genius as well as his mental state in his books. I have heard that most of Dazai’s works have a fair bit of humor in them too but The Setting Sun is one of his bleaker books. Though short, Dazai has given attention to his characters to make readers care about and empathize with them. You can probably read The Setting Sun in a single sitting but you will be thinking about it long after having finished it. 

Fiction

The Setting Sun

Osamu Dazai

Published: 1947

Publisher: Shinchosha

Pages: 126, Paperback (Wilco edition reprint) 

Kiran Desai’s second novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. In Nepal, there was quite a hullabaloo over it with readers calling it insensitive and prejudiced. I tried reading it but I couldn’t finish it. It wasn’t the depiction of Nepalis in the novel that made me unable to read it. I just couldn’t relate to the story. It felt a little off. I have since then heard people rave about the book as well as criticize it.

Readers in Nepal were infuriated by the way Desai had portrayed Nepalis in the book. They come across as crooks and people on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Desai’s disdain for Nepalis is palpable in the book, says a friend who is a voracious reader. And I agreed with her, having found what little I read quite off-putting. I believe writers should have the creative license to write uninhibitedly but to have their biases shine through is something else. So imagine my surprise when this friend told me she was reading Desai’s third novel, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, and that she was quite liking it. 

I bought the tomb of a book, priced at almost Rs 2000, on a whim. I’m a sucker for pretty covers and I fell in love with the deep blue cover with different phases of the moon on it. Also, Ann Patchett, one of my all time favorite authors, has endorsed the book. It’s right there on the cover: A spectacular literary achievement. Authors like Khaled Hosseini, Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, Lauren Groff, among others also have wonderful things to say about the book. Plus, it took Desai almost 20 years to write the novel. I figured there must be something in it. I decided to read the book in the month of January.

A couple of hundred pages into the book, I loved it. The characters were multilayered and I could relate to them. There were many lines and paragraphs that resonated with me. I was even taking photos of them to send to my friends. Things took a downturn when I was a little over halfway into the book. The story moved slowly and many of the instances were not related to the main plot and just weighing it down. Despite its length, the ending feels rushed. I finished it in a month, reading 20 to 30 pages in a day. But if I hadn’t roped in a friend to read it with me, I wouldn’t have continued beyond the halfway mark. 

Desai also came across as tone deaf, since despite the uproar caused by The Inheritance of Loss in Nepal, she has once again inserted a Nepali security guard into the story. The character, that comes in the form of a minor detail in the story, feels like an afterthought. The portrayal of Nepalis as security guards aka ‘Bahadur’ in books always irks me. Have authors not seen any Nepali in any other position than guards? If that’s the case, then all Indian and other immigrants should only work in department stores. Why are they then portrayed as engineers, doctors, and hot shot CEOs? 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny has many parallel plots that feel unnecessary. I struggled to remember what had happened to a certain character, for example Mina Foi who is Sonia’s aunt, when her story was told in bits and spurts and I had read many other character’s stories before getting back to her. That’s not to say that their stories are boring. Not in the least bit. It’s just that when there are stories of the protagonists’ grandfathers, mothers, aunts and various other relatives alongside the main plot, you struggle to remember who is who, how they are linked, and what happened in their lives. 

Though the book is essentially a love story, it’s also a story about immigration and the issues that come with it. But Desai didn’t know how to tell a story without dragging it out. Issues lose their gravitas when they are written like annoying complaints at best. Also the characters have a whiny voice and at times I was way too irritated to empathize with them. Kiran Desai isn’t an author I’m excited about or willing to read again, especially when she seems to be guided by fixed ideas and biases. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny had a promising start but it failed to deliver. Desai had all that time to tell a good story, instead she just makes her character mope around till forcibly tying things together in the end. 

Fiction

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

Published: 2025

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton 

Pages: 670, Hardcover

Avani is studying law and she works part time at a bookstore. She loves reading romance novels and always has her nose buried in one. Then, one day, a man walks into the bookstore. He seems like a character straight from one of her favorite love stories. Aman is hot and the CEO of a successful company. He is also smitten by Avani and says and does just the right things. The two go on a few dates but when Aman wants to take things further, Avani feels things are too good to be true and shuts him off, despite every bone in her body telling her to be with Aman.

‘Too Good To Be True’ is a simple love story of Avani and Aman. It will remind you of the many Bollywood or even Hollywood rom coms that you have watched. There’s nothing new here but it still makes you happy while reading it. You know what’s happening and where things are headed but you can’t help smiling through it all. The writing is also simple and, if you are an avid reader, you can finish the book in a few days. But there are some lines and paragraphs that are so beautiful that you might want to reread them and that makes you stay with the book a bit longer than necessary. 

I read the book because I watched an interview where the author, Prajakta Koli, was talking about her writing process. She says several ideas came to her during the lockdown and she started working on a couple with friends, putting a writer’s room together. The third idea was so simple that she didn’t feel the need for a writer’s room. Instead, she wanted to see what she could do with it on her own. Two years later, she started working on excerpts of the story. It was never supposed to be a book. She was, at best, working on a script for an eight-part series that she could sell. When she showed her work to her team, they said it could be a book and things took a different turn from then on. 

Many of you might have already been familiar with the name Prajakta Koli much before the book came out. She has been making content on YouTube for over a decade now. She goes by mostlysane. She has also worked in some Bollywood movies. Her recent work, Single Papa, a six part series on Netflix, was so hugely popular that it has already been signed for another season. I follow her on Instagram and her posts are sometimes my daily dose of entertainment and other times, just the inspiration I need to get going. I bought her book because I wanted it on my bookshelf–as a reminder to be passionate about work and tell stories that you believe in. 

I’m not a big fan of the romance genre. I have read the likes of Emily Henry, Ali Hazelwood, and Casey McQuiston because their books have been all the rage online, especially on TikTok, but I don’t naturally gravitate towards rom coms. Truth be told, I think I read Too Good To Be True for Prajakta Koli. I find her humble, honest, and charming. And I loved hearing her talk about her favorite books and writing on the podcast ‘Kitabi Cabins’. I wanted to read what she had come up with as well as be a little inspired to write. The book might not have made it to that one shelf where I keep my favorites and it might have been a little too cliche but it’s a cozy read that comes from a good place. I will give it five out five stars because it’s a lovingly written love story. I’m also giving points to the author for wanting to tell a story badly enough to write an entire book without being fazed by what critics might say about it.

Fiction

Too Good to be True

Prajakta Koli

Published: 2024

Publisher: Harper Fiction

Pages: 307, Paperback

I came across a meme on Instagram where a guy asks a girl who says she likes to read to name her favorite book. She replies, “It’s Murakami by Norwegian Wood.” This silly meme made me want to reread Haruki Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’. I had read it when I was in the 12th grade because it was all the hype back then. I had fallen in love with the plot and the characters and I always talked about it as one of my favorite books. But I remembered none of the details. I couldn’t even find my copy of the book on my shelves which is why I had to buy another one. 

All readers have favorite books. But as we continue on our reading journey and meet new characters and hear new stories, inevitably we forget the ones we have read a long time back. What remains is how they made us feel. When we say a certain book is our favorite, chances are that we are talking about how it made us feel and not what’s in it. This year, I’m planning to reread some of my favorite novels and I decided to start with Norwegian Wood. 

Norwegian Wood is perhaps one of the few books by Haruki Murakami that doesn’t have magical realism woven in the plot. It’s a simple, heartwarming love story, or rather the love triangle of Toru Watanabe, Naoko, and Midori. It starts with Toru Watanabe hearing his favorite Beatles song and being transported back to a time and place 20 years ago when he was a student in Tokyo and was in love with a girl named Naoko. She was the girlfriend of his best friend, Kizuki. He recalls those days when uneasy friendship, casual sex, passion, and desire ruled his life. Then Midori walks into his life and he has to decide whether he wants to hold on to the past or work on his future. 

Toru, Naoko, and Midori are fascinating characters with such strong personality traits that it feels like you know them personally. Some of the side characters, like Toru’s friends and Naoko’s roommate, are also integral to the plot. Despite making short appearances, Murakami ensures that they stay on his reader’s mind as much as the main characters. It’s the hallmark of a great writer. I liked the plot of the book but I loved the characters more. Even when one of the side characters goes on a rant, telling her story to Toru, you are never bored and actually want to know more. 

I can now understand why the book was all the rage when I was in school. It deals with friendship, love, and youngster’s search for identity and so it was bound to resonate with us. The love story angle is also intriguing. I find it fascinating that Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in Tokyo when the urge to write came to him. He wrote several books before Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, turned his six figure readership into millions. However, Murakami was uncomfortable with the stardom and moved to Europe and then to the United States for a life of secluded writing. It wasn’t until 1995 that he considered moving back to Japan, but he had his terms and conditions clear: He wouldn’t give interviews or make television appearances. 

I’m fascinated by Murakami’s mind. I wonder how it might feel to have all these stories in one’s head. Norwegian Wood is just one of his masterworks. Others like ‘Kafka on the Shore’, ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’, ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’  and his short story collections are brilliant too. I must have read seven or eight of his books and each of them have reminded me what good stories can do to you. They blow your mind wide open and urge you to look at things from different perspectives. 

Fiction

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami

Translated into English by Jay Rubin 

Published: 2000 (English translation)

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Pages: 389, Paperback