Booker Books

Christopher Booker's book is the most fascinating story of deception ever published. Anyone who would like to know a little more about Britain's real place in the EU should read this book, and learn of the deceipt, half-truths and outright lies supplied by the shadowy EU figures to give their takeover of half a continent a form of legitamy.

If only a tiny percentage of Booker's account is to be believed (and it happens to be fantastically well researched), our new masters in the EU will have finally achieved what Hitler set out to do, and all without a shot being fired.

For readers from overseas wondering what all the fuss is about, remember the old Soviet Union? Well this book shows how the EU has adopted many of it's traits. END

THIS BOOK covers an extraordinarily wide range of subjects, mirroring the European Union's attempts at universal control of our national life. Among many other matters, it analyses Major's abortive `beef war', the Common Agricultural Policy fiasco, the Common Fisheries Policy disaster, what the authors call `The single market: the great illusion', VAT (the EU tax), the single currency, the European Court of Justice's role, and the systematic deception practised by the EU and its supporters.

The key to understanding the EU is to see that it is an attack on our political independence. All the rest follows from this; if we lose sovereignty, we suffer ever-growing economic damage, agricultural disaster (`set aside', burning crops, grubbing up apple trees), ever-increasing and ever-widening VAT, the destruction of our fishing fleet and of our fish stocks, and the many appalling abuses, absurdities, frauds and extravagances that the authors chronicle.

On the drive towards a single European state, they write that, "For the French, the Germans, the Commission and other countries, the move to economic and monetary union agreed at Maastricht was the central thrust of their drive towards the complete integration of the Community into a single state, of which the further additions planned at the IGC, such as a common foreign and defence policy, were only corollaries which must logically follow. Mr Major's refusal to discuss the Single Currency issue had been a crucial part of his strategy to divert British attention from what was really going on in the rest of Europe." They say that the present Government "no more spoke and acted on behalf of the interests and wishes of their fellow-countrymen than the Vichy government had acted for the people of wartime France."

During the 1992 election campaign, the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Parties (and, for that matter, the SNP and Plaid Cymru) barely mentioned the Maastricht Treaty. The Treaty aimed to end our economic and monetary sovereignty by imposing Economic and Monetary Union. Monetary Union means a single currency, to be called the euro; Economic Union means a single economic policy, a single taxation and spending policy, which we already know as monetarism. The authors sum up: "In short, the coming of full `Economic and Monetary Union' would mean the most complete surrender of sovereignty any country could contemplate, short of being physically occupied by an enemy power."

This book tells us a lot about the way our political leaders have cheated and lied in their efforts to destroy our independence. In 1990, Heath was asked if had in mind `a United States of Europe' when he took us in to the Common Market: he replied, `Of course, yes.' That is not what he said at the time!

In 1992, Honourable members and noble Lords solemnly debated and voted for a Treaty that they had not even seen. The Government had not yet published the Maastricht Treaty, and neither Commons nor Lords insisted on seeing it before voting for it. Douglas Hurd even said that he had not read it before signing it!

ECONOMIC EFFECTS

What of the EU's much-vaunted economic benefits? Surely, such far-reaching sacrifices of sovereignty could only be justified by some pretty hefty gains? In 1971, Heath said that joining the Common Market would have `positive and substantial' effects on our balance of payments. What really happened? From 1973 to 1995, our accumulated trade deficit with EU was £100 billion; we had a trade surplus with every other continent: our accumulated trade surplus with the rest of the world came to £80 billion.

The European Exchange Rate Mechanism, EMU's forerunner, cost us at least £70 billion in lost output and jobs during the two years that we were in it. On 10 September 1992, six days before Britain left it, Major declared that "the soft option, the devaluer's option, the inflationary option would be a betrayal of our future, and it is not the Government's policy." The Government, the Opposition and the country's leading institutions all agreed that devaluation would be a disaster, and that the ERM was inevitable and wonderful. The subsequent devaluation has led to the lowest level of inflation for 40 years. And this miserable Government tries now to take the credit for the consequences of our leaving ERM!

The EU has some very large tax rises waiting for us. In 1977, the 6th VAT Directive obliged all member states to harmonise their VAT systems by 1997: Jacques Santer recently said that this was `a priority'. This would mean 17.5% rates of VAT on our domestic heating, children's clothing and shoes, books and newspapers, tickets for rail, air and bus, new houses, and food. VAT on food would add £7 billion a year to Britain's shopping bills. Our exemption on food is being reviewed this year. The Maastricht Treaty says that all states must accept the fully-harmonised VAT system, with no more derogations (that means us!)

Our total budgetary contributions to the EU since we joined are £100 billion. In 1995, we contributed £7.7 billion to the EU (£132 per person) and received back just £4 billion in grants and subsidies. The contributions come from the working class; the grants and subsidies go to companies, landowners and big farmers.

The EU's effect on our capacity to grow good cheap food has been disastrous. The CAP adds £1000 to the average family's food bill every year. In 1995 alone, the EU spent £439 million on destroying food. The CAP gave 13 companies and landowners £500,000 each; 5000 big farmers got £50,000 each. That is a total of £256.5 million in subsidies just to these 5013. 80% of subsidies go to 20% of farmers. Between 1990 and 1994, over 300 abattoirs were closed down, destroying jobs and causing needless suffering to animals which had to be transported ever further for slaughter.

A report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1995 detailed the CAP's failings but concluded "most other EU governments appear strongly attached to the CAP in its present form." So it is impossible to reform the CAP, although all Parliamentary parties endlessly pledge their intent to do so. The only way to improve our situation is to leave the CAP.

EU FRAUD

Clearly, the EU has an uphill job trying to persuade us that losing our sovereignty gives us more power and that economic destruction brings progress. So it resorts to systematic deception to try to make us accept their theft of our sovereignty.

For example, in 1994 the CBI surveyed what its member firms thought of a single currency. It sent a questionnaire to 624 selected firms; 206 replied. Only 59 firms, just 28% of those replying, favoured joining a single currency. 115 firms, 56%, said a single currency might help their business in the long run but `was not a necessity'. 181 firms, 88%, opposed any `deepening integration' of the EU.

Government and CBI spokesmen added the 28% and the 56% together to claim that a majority of CBI members favoured EMU. So the Government and CBI leaders creatively defined 59 firms, 0.7 % of the CBI's 8,000 members, as the majority!

For a more realistic picture, it is necessary only to notice that in 1995 the Federation of Small Businesses (membership 70,000) voted to leave the EU, and that in 1996 2000 members of the Institute of Directors at their annual conference voted overwhelmingly against joining a single currency.

The authors give another example of the kind of sharp practice that the EU uses. In 1994, a body calling itself the `Higher Education European Social Fund Services' sent letters to British universities saying: "The receipt of future ESF support .. [would be] .. Influenced by the amount of publicity given to ESF projects." No wonder that corruption and fraud are on the increase!

In all, we should congratulate the authors for their unremitting assault on the European Union and all its works. They have made a massive contribution to upholding our sovereignty.

This is a remarkable and well-researched history of the European Union from its origins immediately after the First World War to its present efforts to give itself a Constitution. The book lays bare the tactics of the quislings who are more loyal to the EU than to Britain, the Tory Europhiles, for example, who split their own party to assist the more Europhile Labour Party to win the 1997 election.

The EU is not about sharing or cooperation between sovereign governments. It is not inter-governmental, but supranational. The dividing line is the veto: where there are vetoes, there is inter-governmentalism; with vetoes gone, there is only a new, supranational form of government "beyond the control of national governments, politicians or electorates. Nation states, governments and parliaments could be left in place: but only so that they could gradually become subordinated to a new supranational government which was above them all." It has been a slow-motion coup d'etat.

The single currency was designed to unite the new state: as the EU's founder Jean Monnet said, "Via money Europe could become political in five years." German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, "Currency, security and constitution, those are the three essential components of the sovereignty of modern nation states, and the introduction of the euro constituted the first move towards their communitarisation in the EU." EU President Romano Prodi said, "The Single Market was the theme of the 80s; the single currency was the theme of the 90s; we must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy and political unity."

How has EU membership affected Britain? Our industries have become expendable; for example, at the time of entry, a senior civil servant in the Scottish fisheries department advised ministers not to go into any detail on the damage caused to the fishing industry: "The more one is drawn into such explanations, the more difficult it is to avoid exposing the weaknesses of the inshore fisheries position, the only answer to which may be that in the wider context they must be regarded as expendable."

We do not need the EU. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research found that withdrawing from the EU would not cost jobs. The Independent reported this as `8 million jobs could be lost if Britain quits EU' (18 February 2000). The NIESR's director, Dr Martin Weale, responded that the Independent's claim was "absurd ... pure Goebbels. In many years of academic research I cannot recall such a wilful distortion of the facts." In the subsequent discussion, Gordon Brown claimed, "750,000 British companies export from Britain to Europe": the government's own figure was 18,000.

The British working class's resolute hostility to the euro has defeated that EU attack. The EU's rulers and their quislings are coming back at us by trying to ram through their new Constitution and by imposing regionalisation. We must reject these assaults too.

Booker and North have done yeoman work in exploring scores of original sources related to the modern European Union. Most impressively, they have returned to the 1920s, when the contemporary notion of "European Union" began. They note that an element of deception has been present since the very earliest years of the project, demonstrating that the idea's early exponents believed that their utopian ideals, whilst admirable, ought to be realized without the knowledge or participation of the member countries' peoples. In fact, Booker and North reveal that a strong tendency of the strain of Unionists which created the present Brussels regime has been to shun democracy by creating a supranational authority with no meaningful accountability to the people, whilst simultaneously subverting individual states' national sovereignty. A thoroughly absorbing and fascinating read, one essential for anyone interested in contemporary European politics. The defeat in France and the Netherlands of the EU constitution has not rendered this book irrelevant; indeed, it provides a warning about the accumulated power of a body still very much in being and still very zealous to reach the consummation of its endeavors.

This book was good, but Richard Booker did a MUCH better job going into detail on this subject with "Blow the Trumpet in Zion". Make the most of your money and time; get the book that will start you on your journey to understanding history of the nation of Israel. Read "Blow the Trumpet in Zion"!!

Richard Booker is an excelent writer. This is a relativly short book, but, it contains a very powerful teaching. His writing style makes very complex issues very clear and easy to understand. This is true not just in this books, but, in all Mr. Booker's writings. If you are looking for a deeper understanding of how so much anger and hate has been shown over the years toward the Jews, you MUST read this book.

I have never really give enough thought to my political affilation as a liberal or democarat. However, after reading this book, Bracey has made me take an introspectiive look at some of my political thoughts, or maybe even fantasies. Bracey thoroughly traces the history and evolution of African-American political idealogies. He gives his readers plenty of information about individuals in Black history whom might not always get the most attention, but are earnestly deserving. In fact, Bracey spends so much time detailing what and whom prominent Neo-conservative figures are concurrently, that he seems to drop the question his title poses. You really only get an answer in the 3-4 page conclusion. But, understadning the history of black conservatism is just as importnat as any answer you might want this scholar to put forth. If you want a staunch critique of black conservative and neo-conservative values, then I am afraid this book does not really deliver. Instead, it gives somehting more tangible, a look into the minds of some of Black Americas most influential thinkers and why thier views are gaining attention in the Black populas. I believe this book is a must read for anyone interested in the fate of Black America.

Although I haven't finished this book yet it has given me a whole new outlook on conservatism. Why so many black people are embracing this ideology as of late. Let's face it. Liberal politics has failed in black america! Integration is a joke. That we abandoned any attempt to create out own institutions in the past has resulted in a total take over in our own neighborhoods. Economic's, education, politics, you name it. All for not embracing conservative effort's of developement in our own communities. From Booker T. Washington to Malcolm X it has been preached but not practiced enough. Laws and social programs have been a failure. The distinction between "organic conservatism" and today's "neo-conservatism" should open the eye's of many. I haven't finished so I may revise this review. I loved this book so much that I ordered two more for my co-workers. A great read.

This book is a wonderful collection of some of the most important speeches given my African American in this country. I enjoy the reading the words of so many leaders from Brooker T. Washington to Julian Bond. Please consider reading these speeches as a way to understand the African American history.

Ellis and Smith provide a unique anthology of African American voices over the past 100 years. In doing so, they give voice to the voiceless with transcribed speeches of leading African American speakers of the twentieth century. For an "as if you were there" read, "Say It Plain" is a five-star choice.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

Ms Booker has hit the mark with this book....has you on the edge of your seat and just when you think.....well, you have to read it yourself. I highly rate this book.

This book is the best mystery/thriller I have ever read. The author has a writing style that keeps her readers on the edge of their seat from the very first word to the last. "Slaybells Ring" throws many unexpected curves to the reader, and the ending is an incredible surprise. For anyone who loves a good mystery and to be held in suspense throughout the book, "Slaybells Ring" is for you! I hope for many more books from this excellent author, Sharon King-Booker.

I ventured out of my usual kind of reads for this book because of all the hype. It sounded kinda interesting. When I read the blurbs on it, I was expecting some kind of big epiphany from it. I'm disappointed in it, it was just a weird story that dragged on, and the back and forth in time thing was confusing. I've read other books with that technique that flowed well and were easy to follow. I am giving it three stars because Mr. Martel can obviously write, no shortage of talent there. There is also a decent amount of creativity in his book. The third star is me admitting that I bought this book because of the hype, so I won't punish it because it's not my usual taste. Honestly, the story is not that interesting, a lot of the scenes seemed pointless, and the big message of the book comes across weak and contrived. Like someone shoved it in hoping it would leave you in awe. It doesn't. I really don't get the big hoopla here. Wasn't time well-spent for me.

Life of Pi is a very interesting book once you get past the beginning. In the whole first part of the book, I had to force myself to read it. I would have stopped if the book was not assigned for school. Yann wrote about topics as if he had just watched a show on The Animal Planet and wanted to tell us about why animals did certain things like escaping from their enclosure. But after I got past that part, which put me to sleep. I could not stop reading. He describes Pi's adventure with so much detail that it was practically a movie in the form of words. He really gives a lot of personality to the tiger; Richard Parker. Richard Parker is such a huge role and I think it is very hard to describe an animal's personality with such detail.
If you can get past the first part of the book, you will enjoy the rest of the story. All i can say is that Yann wrote with so much detail that it ties you to the two main characters, Richard Parker and Pi.

it breaks down all barriers of imagination and offers a breathtaking understanding of life through a story of simple transition from innocence to maturity...something each adult reader can relate to. be prepared for the more graphic details in the second and third section of the book which are a little unpleasant, but it is this very crudeness that gives the book that extra sense of realism and makes the book a thrilling read... i definitely recommend it!

A wonderful, imaginative and utterly engaging meditation on the existence of God, really (not to mention a rollicking good tale). And in the final analysis, I like the story with the animals in it better! (see page 352) Enjoy.

A juvenile story which poorly masks religious/philosophical messages. To make it worse, at the end the author explains the whole thing for those who somehow miss the insipid point.

At heart Roy's book is about true love thwarted by family and society. Set in the state of Kerala on the rain-soaked coast of the Indian peninsula, Ammu, an independent woman from a good family, and Velutha, an enterprising man belonging to the "untouchable" caste have a short, intense love affair that ends in tragedy. India's ancient caste system (the god of big things, the law of who may love whom) destroys their relationship (the god of small things).

Roy takes the story further and shows how caste-based bias overwhelms reason and humanity when a small-town communist party boss conspires with a brutal conniving police chief and an embittered family to avenge the lovers' "crimes" against convention. As might be expected, the hypocritical acts of authority make things worse.

Roy balances the joy of a tender love affair against the grim fate of women in a male-dominated society. As a young woman Ammu fled a tyrannical wife-beating father into a marriage of convenience. Her impulsively chosen husband, at first looked like a passport out of hell. He soon turned out to be an abusive alcoholic who tried to sell his wife into prostitution. The failed union leaves her burdened and blessed with inseparable twins, a girl Rahel, and a boy Estha who seem to share one mind. After divorce Ammu returns to an unwelcoming family. Her mother, psychologically crippled from her spouse's abuse, has no patience for a woman who would leave her husband. Ammu's brother Chacko, is brilliant scholar and a melancholy male chauvenist, who was rejected by his English wife after she realized he required a maid, and a mother more than needed a wife. Finally, Ammu is despised by a bitter, dried-out aunt who had the bad judgement to lust unsuccessfully after a Jesuit priest turned Hindu ascetic.

The twins are cynically implicated in the destruction of Ammu's affair with Velutha. Ammu is cast out of the family. Rahel and Estha are cruelly separated. Eventually, Rahel marries and then leaves an American husband because she cannot love him. Estha retreats into solitary silence. In a final bitter-sweet note of redemption the twins reunite as adults and console each other - "emptiness and quietness stacked together."

The theme of ill-fated lovers is commonplace. Those who dare to cross ingrained lines of prejudice, whether of tribal membership, wealth, skin color, education, etc. suffer the consequences. Ammu and Velutha are like Juliet and Romeo - they pay dearly for their brief moments of happiness. The reference to Shakespeare's tragedy fits the story. Roy sprinkles her tale with allusions to his plays and the works of other English writers, such as Kipling (The Jungle Books) and Joseph Conrad (The Heart of Darkness). She stitches the themes and styles from these sources in a colorful patchwork. The book's power comes from the contrasting of pity for lover's tragedy, the children's imaginative and playful delight in their world, and the evil savagery committed in the name of justice.

Much of the book is narrated by Rahel, first as a grief-stricken adult, and then in the voice of a child reliving her mother's unhappy marriage, divorce, love affair, and punishment. The core of the story is a period of two weeks in which the love affair took root, flourished, and died. As memory jumps unexpectedly from one thought to another, so does the narrative thread zig-zag years back and forth across time from Rahel's childhood, to her adulthood, and across place including India, England, and America. Like guests at a dinner who sometimes interrupt with their own stories, Roy allows other characters to speak, including the chauvenist brother, the abused mother, the bitter aunt, the communist party boss and the police chief.

Roy seems to say that "small" unhappy marriages mirrors India's historical "big" unhappy misalliances with other countries. Foremost is the oppression that India experienced under the British empire. The Chinese communists brought violent and fruitless revolution. Western industrialization brought economic and ecological devastation. Through history India's partners took what they could, but left untouched its poverty, illiteracy, and caste-prejudice.

The constant changes of time, place, and voice may puzzle some readers. It helps to read the first chapter carefully once or twice before going on with rest of the book. The first chapter lays out the kernel of the story in broad strokes and the following chapters layer on detail - like peeling an onion in reverse. Like the monsoon rains that drench Kerala, this book will move you to tears. It is beautiful and well worth reading.

Was able to find a used copy claimed to be in like new condition. It was just as advertised. Enjoyed the book immensely

I read this book as a literature student in college and it is still one of my favorite books of all time. Her words read like poetry. It literally took my breath away in its beauty and message. Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about the effects of globalization on so-called Third World countries, as well as those who appreciate a good romantic novel in the magical realist tradition.

Reading this novel is akin to being reborn- as a snake eases out of its present coil and strips down to a more essential skin, so too will this violated madonna of lyricism attune you to the fundamentals of what it is to be human. This book strips away the veneer of polite society and illumes the central questions of humanity: why do we hate, love who we love and live as we do? At the end of this pulsating, haunting and all-seeing unveiling, I asked myself the overarching question that is central to each of our daily existence: why do I breathe?

This book has been mischaracterized as magic realism in the notes below. While people are entitled to call it whatever they want, if you want to revert to widely accepted definitions of the style, it isn't, not at all. And therein lies its power: there is no supernatural realm, no genius ghost, no divine intervention. This is us. Really, this is what we are. How can we address that which we carry within ourselves, escaping even our utterest exhaled breath? No matter how deep the sugared sighs of humankind, there is something so appalling that lurks in the human psyche that generally goes unacknowledged, and most people live it on a daily basis. This is one of the few works that can even hope to awake the quixotic part of us, that laments what we are, and gives hope that the reader's empathy will incite something better. This book turns the staid precepts of our world upside down: violation becomes salvation and successfully brings us to the searing understanding where the sickening is natural and right, because time honoured social convention fosters the blinding nightmare.

Only three writers have severely affected my ability to see the page in my life. I cried for Estha and Rahel, for two people who no one could ever understand except each other. I cried because to my knowledge this is the best book ever written on the caste system, and what it says about every single one of us. This is not just a book about India. It is a vast commentary on humanity, and most of all on love- that over-invoked, roughly used, oft bedraggled, and disregarded commodity.

The God of Small Things runs fingers of of feeling over your spine with its rivers of lyricism. It is fresh, insightful and sparkling- one of the great books of our time. There is no other work like it out there. Read it and see.

I had high hopes for this book when I picked it up. Halfway through this book and I find that I have to force myself to turn the next page. If you love reading interesting and in depth books that you can understand, this is not the book for you. The author's words are a spiral of mumbo jumbo that drags on and on. I often found myself re-reading the same sentence 3 or 4 times in order to grasp the meaning but it never comes. If I had to compare this book to something, I would compare it to a long a strange dream... it doesn't make sense and it's not something you would remember after 5 minutes!

How fortunate I was years ago when the film, The English Patient, was two weeks from release and a friend said, 'Oh, the movie is based on the novel. I think you'd like it....' I bought the book the next night and stayed up late reading it. Ondaatje sees the world through a poet's eyes, and he gives us artistic renderings of people and places in a rich time in history. This novel would definitely be included in my list of Top 20 favorites. Ondaatje is a writer's writer....

Ondaatje's prose is lyrical and poetic. More than anything, Ondaatje creates an atmoshpere that is as much a presence in this book than any single character. The story delves into the lives of four people living in a war-damaged Italian monastery as World War II ends. Hana, a nurse, attempts to nurse the English patient back to life. Caravaggio, Hana's childhood friend, and Kip, a skillful bomb difuser, make up the rest of the cast of characters. Beautifully and evocatively written but slow at times.

To Hana the nurse, English patient is `a white lion'. I've come to expect movie characters to bear a marginal resemblance to those of the novel from which they are extracted. Seldom do the people in the novel voice anything resembling the clever lines from the film. Ondaatje describes brilliantly his story settings and the psychoanalytical introspections of his characters like an omniscient Nanny narrator.
Some of this book's visceral content presents itself as juvenile voyeuristic, not to be confused with the sort of obligatory 'adult content' that's required to provoke a publisher to finish reading a manuscript submission.

While the main storyline describes some heroic coping mechanisms adopted by it's characters to survive their various war-induced neurosis', the English patient suffers physical and emotional wounds which will kill him. maybe it should have been called 'The Great Escape'. Except that the author seems to have wanted a title that would be hemorrhaging irony. The critics called Ondaatje, 'poetic'. And his skill with words may be described as accomplished. he has been researching the writings to the Royal Geographic Society by explorers of the Libyan Desert. We have a glimpse into "the tact of [Ondaatje's] words." "In the desert to repeat something would be to fling more water into the earth."
"Here nuance took you a hundred miles." AND
"A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water."

I know the feeling of being enveloped in the 'emptiness' of the Mojave Desert, which sometimes can belie the impression that there maybe is nothing, maybe never was nor ever will be anything to come back to.

In reviewing Michael Ondaatje's recent novel DIVISADERO, I remarked that his narrative technique involved writing short fragments, loosely connected in theme but jumping around in subject and time, and leaving it to the reader to connect them. Such an appeal to the imagination is rare and gratifying, and the results are complex and evocative. If I try to forget the movie, the same could be true of the earlier ENGLISH PATIENT, although here Ondaatje is dealing with a subject of greater historical resonance -- the Second World War in Egypt and Italy -- and the interplay of personal narrative and hard fact is more difficult to bring off than the largely private scale of DIVISADERO.

Both books are about people recovering from trauma. In DIVISADERO, the scarring was psychological; here, it is physical as well. The setting is a ruined Italian villa north of Florence, just after the German retreat. It had been used as a temporary hospital, but now only one patient remains, the supposed Englishman of the title. He is attended by Hana, a young Canadian nurse, who has seen so many men die that she can no longer weep the recent death of her own father. She is joined by David Caravaggio, an old friend of the family, a professional thief recruited to work in intelligence, who has had his thumbs cut off during an interrogation. And camping in the garden is Kirpal Singh (Kip), a Sikh bomb-disposal expert, who has only his rigid self-discipline and skills to protect him from disaster. The English Patient himself is an unrecognizable figure, burned all over his body, brought out of the North African desert by Bedouin tribesmen. It later becomes clear that he is not English at all, but a British-educated Hungarian count, Ladislaus de Almásy, an explorer of some renown.

Each of the characters is gradually opened out. Caravaggio is the least fully realized emotionally, but he becomes increasingly significant in the back-story. Conversely, Hana's history needs little filling-in, since we see life in the villa mainly through her eyes and feel through her skin. Her relationship with Kip is one of the loveliest things about this rich book, and the Sikh's character is developed in considerable depth, especially as he finds a purpose to his life during his training in England. His work as a bomb-disposal expert is described in always fascinating and sometimes breath-stopping detail.

But the most space is devoted to Almásy's time in the desert, his years of patient exploration of the Great Sand Sea and the Gilf Kebir in the 1930s, his passionate but intermittent affair with the wife of a colleague, and his activities during the war itself. These things are dug up gradually, as shards of memory, some relatively objectively, some under the influence of morphia, some that might even be hallucinations. The events of the thirties emerge most clearly, but more recent happenings must sometimes be pieced together from the briefest of references. I am not sure that a fully coherent scenario would ever emerge from reading the book alone, or that it was intended to.

Here, of course, I have to mention the 1997 movie. Anthony Minghella, the director, has in fact written such a scenario, connecting the fragments into one persuasive interpretation of the novel. Largely focusing on Almásy's story, he has tidied the narrative and greatly compressed the time-frame to create a combination of war story and grand romance with the epic sweep of Tolstoy or Pasternak. The movie is filled with such unforgettable imagery and such strongly-acted characters that his version cannot easily be put aside. But the fact that Ondaatje approved this adaptation does not make it the only possible one, and it is now much harder to enjoy the open-ended quality of his story-telling in its own terms.

For those who have seen the movie, the greatest pleasure in the book may come from the elements that Minghella played down: the stories of Hana, Kip, and Caravaggio, and Ondaatje's quiet portrayal of life in the ruined villa. Consider his description of a bonfire of weeds that Hana would gather and burn "...during the late afternoon's pivot into dusk. The damp fires steam and burn, and the plant-odoured smoke sidles into the bushes, up into the trees, then withers on the terrace in front of the house. It reaches the window of the English patient, who can hear the drift of voices, now and then a laugh from the smoky garden. He translates the smell, evolving it backward to what had been burned. Rosemary, he thinks, milkweed, wormwood...". It is simple writing, but a passage that excites the imagination, involving all the senses, creating its own images in the mind. The whole book will do the same, if you are lucky enough to be able to come to it without preconception.

Few books are felt as much as read, but "The English Patient" falls into this category. Like the film, it is hauntingly beautiful, but for different reasons. The story of people haunted by love and war, their damaged souls converging at a villa in Italy, remains, but the focus and method in which the story is told on paper is spellbinding and stunning.

The passages are like water moving to and fro over rocks, shifting back and forth in time so that the beauty beneath can still be seen, but as a shimmering mirage in the desert. It is a strange instance where it is almost recommended that you see the film first in order to see more clearly in your mind the characters as their stories unfold.

Whereas the film focused more on the burned Almasy and his memories of the unending African desert, where he would meet the enigmatic and beautiful Katherine Clifton, sealing the fate which would leave him a charred and hollow shell of his former self, Hanah is the centerpoint of Ondaatje's lovely poetic prose in the novel. You can almost feel the ghosts hovering over each character as Ondaatje paints a masterpiece with words.

Deeply romantic and lyrical, it is the same story, but a more impressionistic and less linear portrait of love and loss. The book is like a delicate flower just beneath the waters, its beauty evident but achingly kept just out of reach. The film brought the flower into the sun so we could enjoy its texture and fragrance in a more real fashion. Both are magnificent, just a different picture of the same flower.

If you love the film, you must read the book. It is a hauntingly beautiful novel different from anything else you'll ever read. A masterwork of rich and evocative prose that will touch the heart, an organ of fire.

Just finished reading this book and wrote this to my children.

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.. finally, finished reading 'Midnight's Children'. Am totally dumbfounded at how great this book is. Being more familiar with Indian History (and having lived through it), I am amazed at Rushdie's powers of imagination to merge real events with a magic carpet ride to make his point; many people like me lived through these historic events and were kind of oblivious to them....

I am amazed at how well he touches upon the culture, social habits, religion. ........

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I don't want to elaborate on the contents, because it is important for one to read this book without any preconceived notions. If you are a MATURE reader(am not talking about age) , you will not regret it.

This is a heavy weight book; you will need to constantly ponder on what you read. People familiar with Indian History, social habits, religions will be able to grasp it easier than others.




***** DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK ****************
***** DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK ****************
***** DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK ****************
***** DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK ****************

a few ramblings from me:

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Being more familiar with the Indian History (and having lived through it), I am amazed at Rushdie's powers of imagination to merge real events with a magic carpet ride to make his point; many people like me (even though I can excuse myself partly because I was in the U.S. at that time) took Indira's Emergency declaration lightly and some even felt good about it, looking at the temporary results (trains running on time; a hiatus on bribery, government officials actually doing work....); Nehru (Indira's father) was one of the leaders of the freedom movement. The irony ..

It is a well known fact that Sanjay Gandhi (Indira's son) led the mass forced sterilization of mostly poor people. There was very little opposition; many even welcomed it (why should the poor have some many children, when they cannot afford them). Add the religious angle to it (Hindus vs Moslems)...

.. yes everyone knows that Morarji drank his own urine. Maybe, that's why he lived to a ripe old age..

.. how wonderful to have so many mothers and fathers.

.. my son who is NOT my son, but is the real grandson of my father ....

.. and Padma, the dung lotus ....


everyone will form their own impressions of the book. The metaphors, symbolism and irony cannot be missed. For me, the sprinkling of all the familiar things (Kolynos toothpaste., pan, spittoons,chutneys, pickles..) provided the relief in the form of nostalgia. Personally, I don't think of this as a political book, more of a glimpse of how times change with a twist of irony. Hey, life goes on....

The length and density of Midnight's Children was too much for 50% of my family and friends book club. Non-finishers included both 30-somethings and 60-somethings. Those of us who persevered found the book enriching and enlightening. The writing style and vocabulary were discouraging to the more concrete readers in the group. I will read another of his books someday, but I will not recommend it for book club!

This book won the Booker of Bookers, so when I saw it sitting on the shelf, it said, "I must be good, take me home!" After all, I've adored some other Booker winners.

Not this one.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight, August 15th, 1947, at the same moment that India becomes an independent nation. He knows that he must be special - he even receives a letter from the Prime Minister for such a fortuitious birth time. This book isn't just about him, though, it is about several generations of his family and the history of his country, all of which makes it into a lengthy literary saga.

I didn't like Saleem. He drove me crazy with his dodging of topics and endless diversions. I wasn't interested in his relationship with Padma and I got completely fed up with his self-important attitude. I understand that his condition is reflected by India throughout the novel, but that didn't mean I enjoyed reading about it just because it had literary value. His connection with the other midnight children was interesting, but once again his arrogance ruined it. He's an unreliable narrator to an extent, but not in the way that I like, if that makes any sense at all. He's just trying to make himself sound good. Maybe because he is, apparently, not very attractive.

India, as a country, was by far the most compelling character throughout the book. I loved reading about the different regions, about Bombay and Delhi, about how rapidly India was changing. I'd certainly recommend this book for insight into the culture and that is easily the best part of it. I wouldn't mind seeing the Kashmir region for myself, now, after reading about it so many times.

So, in the end? I think Midnight's Children was too literary for me. I can tell that I'd get more enjoyment out of it if I went through in a class and then had to write a paper on it to pick it apart. As I was going through, I actually picked out paper topics that would illuminate the subject matter better. I'm not quite crazy enough to go out and write a paper just now, though. If I ever have fewer TBRs waiting for me, I might pick it up again and see if I can catch some of the threads that I missed this time, but I don't anticipate that happening for a long time.

Oh, my goodness. What do I say about this? It's such a rich, excellently written story with lots of interesting action and characters. Bonus: Rushdie has a wicked wicked WICKED sense of humor. And, did I say that the writing is to die for? Envy the size of an elephant inhabited my body as I was reading this ... however, it didn't take any pleasure away from the reading of it. Okay, I'm gonna get bossy now: Put it on your to-do list.

This book left me with no respect for the author or for the Booker prize.One of the 100 best books to read....REALLY?????????? Are we talking about the same book????? The most disgusting and unconvincing book I have ever read.