Najmus Sakib

Review of 'The Running Grave' (Sphere, 2023) by Robert Galbraith

From the beginning we see Benjamin Honey, the patriarch of the island, longing to return to his past, in a garden, the Eden of his childhood where he reminisces about being with a woman who might or might not have been her mother.

Wilson hasn’t written a retelling from the perspectives of the subjugated but has rather been true to the original, although she doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the sheer misogyny of the Homeric period.

There is more squash in the book than most readers will take a liking to, but the game sometimes works as a metaphor for the bigger picture.

Following the trails of Imaginary Homelands (Penguin Books, 1992) and Step Across The Line (Modern Library, 2003), comprising essays written and lectures given by Salman Rushdie between 2003-2020, Languages of Truth is Rushdie’s third collection of nonfiction works and is as a delectable read as its predecessors if not more.

Divakaruni has a message to send with this novel. To her, independence entails not just liberation or freedom from subjugation, it also means doing the right thing for oneself and for the people around us.

The story begins with an unnamed battle where all men of the tiny principality of Kampili die. Their wives commit mass suicide by lighting a massive bonfire on the coast of the river Pampa and immolating themselves in the pyre.