Perhaps Martin Amis’s works do not grab me for the most part because it veers too far away from the humanism of, say, Saul Bellow—a writer Martin greatly admires and has written about extensively.

Institutional racism in colonies, migration, flawed anti-monarchy sentiments stemming from personal vendettas, and the need for rebellion permeate the lives of these characters.

It is the disease that maintains the upper hand in the plot. A jarring voice of its own, the toxins spilling across the pages in bold, chaotic words.

A major scientific breakthrough has ensured that boys born with a particular gene can be identified as having the potential to grow into violent men.

This story, which originally began as a short story, features a headstrong heroine putting her desires above what society expects of her, in order to realise her destiny.

Set in 1990s Dhaka against the backdrop of the military occupation, the novella follows the lives of a young university professor, his wife, and their house help, Phulbanu. The story is narrated entirely from Phulbanu’s perspective. 

Schwartz’s narrator speaks in the choral “we”, and like a daisy chain, they connect all these women’s shared yet individual experiences of feeling closed in, being violated, feeling misunderstood by society, until they all shed their names and managed to “escap[e] the century”.

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.

How Mingherians responded to the infectious plague in 1901 isn’t altogether different from our response to the Covid-19. They too hid their patients in fear of stigma and isolation.