2025-07-30
score: 8.5
type: fiction
i really really enjoyed this book (thanks Brandon for the recommendation). the book balances comedy and tragedy well; often describing horrific events through the lens of a naive man with a somewhat comedic twist.
this book is also a reminder of the flagrant inequalities that are still common in many countries around the world.
i had the privilege of traveling to India and Nepal earlier this year. i think that my visits helped me get absorbed by the book and made it all the more relevant.
here are some quotes i enjoyed:
"They remain slaves because they can’t see what is beautiful in this world."
I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth.
As I brushed my teeth with my finger, I noticed what my left hand was doing: it had crawled up to my groin without my noticing— the way a lizard goes stealthily up a wall— and was about to scratch.
A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent— as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way— to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.