
Writer, researcher, scientist and mom, with an occasional flair for being a rascal. I live and work in beautiful Canberra.


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Another writer.

Mehreen Arshi


I thought it would be poetic to tie the end of the year 2021 to the beginning of 2022 by writing the first review of 2022 about the last book I read in the departing year. It’s a short review; it being a short piece of art. Why a piece of art? Let’s circle back to it in a moment.

The Trial written by the Austrian author Franz Kafka in 1914-15 and published posthumously is a story of a man named Joseph K. who has been accused of a crime unknown to him and also to the authorities who have come to arrest him. It’s a story of the journey of a man who is destined to be doomed from the moment of his accusation, even though the nature of his crime remains unknown and is never revealed to the reader as well.

At first K. does not take his so-called verbal arrest seriously at all. He is free to live, work, roam around at his own will. He goes along everyday life, openly mocking the law, challenging the justice system in an attempt to refute its baseless claims against his case and himself. However, when the seriousness of his predicament is pressed upon him by those who become aware of his case, it sets alarm bells in his head. Joseph K then seeks help in an effort to dismiss the case and claims of any wrong doing and realises just how inaccessible, unapproachable and un-influenceable the justice system is.

The fact that he remains ignorant of the charges and the irony that his case would be worse off if he tries to challenge the court is drawn out in several conversations in the book. Joseph K. immerses himself completely in his quest to seek his way to the acquittal while neglecting his every day life. He is portrayed to be a proud man bordering on arrogance, he considers the other defendants inferior. Yet the construct of fear built around him is so strong that it constrains him to the terror. He spirals into uncertainty and becomes infatuated with seeking help to prove his innocence and becomes engulfed by the view that his impending doom is inevitable. Any hope of his acquittal is trampled through carefully fabricated narratives of those who come across him discussing his case and those he is seeking help form. All of this is happening while the fear is gripping his mind, imprisoning it while his body is free to roam around. This probably draws out on the nature of human beings that we often deem ourselves innocent but cannot prove it or challenge the world, eventually accepting the blame and live with undue guilt.

I dubbed this novel a piece of art because the book is a great spectacle of descriptive writing. It’s a narrative that is masterful at placing the reader in the setting, the surroundings become almost tangible with the way Kafka portrays the world he creates and places the reader in the setting right alongside the protagonist. Would this expansive way of writing appeal to the average reader of the modern age we live in? Probably not. His evocative words would have spun magic in the times that the book was written in, but is unlikely to have an impact on the reader today if they do not have an appreciation of literary writing.

An average reader impressed by the reputation that Kafka has built over the last century will pick up the book, look for a plot line, find it absent and might cast the book aside. It will tire them; reading page after page of description and lengthy dialogue that moves through expansive narrative between characters that pop up along the book at random. Should you pick up this book to read? Yes, for the author sends a profound message about human nature. Kafka has drawn our attention to the reality that we are seemingly free but are bound by our inner fears. They hinder us from taking a leap in faith to achieve our goals, imprisoning us to our own insecurities when we are free to explore endless possibilities. The prison is inside our own heads. In times when we should stand on the solid ground of faith within ourselves, the continuous need to seek validation from those around us often overtakes. When we should be wrestling with our reality to bring about a change, we lose this belief in ourselves and often accept our circumstances or fate because of others’ view of us, which can paralyse us, obstructing our move forward to inner emancipation.


A profound exploration of an individual's entanglement with an opaque justice system and the internal prisons of fear and validation, set in a vividly descriptive world that may challenge modern readers.

The Trial - A review


#### Cease, cows, life is short.

Full disclaimer 1: This book will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Full disclaimer 2: Keeping in mind the enormity of this narrative, I will only attempt to do partial justice to this review.

This book had been on my list for the last two years, sitting on my pile labeled ‘to read’. Somehow it always found its way to the bottom of the pile, bearing the load of other literature on its back that always seemed to climb up the ladder of my reading priority. It was perhaps due to the general view out there that it’s a complex read.

It is.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about a book that is nothing less than a masterpiece. Written by the Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez in 1967, it is a novel that spans over multiple generations. It is set in the town of Macondo, a fictional place so far removed from reality that people believe in flying carpets, in the magic of magnets and where ice is a wonder.

Why is this book a masterpiece? The author has set the book alive with magic realism, making the possibilities endless for imagination, for pushing the boundaries with language. He sets up the schema in such a way that it becomes possible to create events in shapes and forms that prove instrumental for portraying characters, exploring attributes that contribute to the complexity of human nature.

The beauty of this book is that it heavily relies on descriptive writing to create a powerful narrative without relying on dialogue. The dialogue is really scarce throughout the text. If you are a person who is looking for a story to read, then I would ask you to leave this book alone. However if you are someone who craves to lose themselves in the enchantment of the power of words, please go ahead and enjoy phrases such as “tying a colourful string of chatter together” or “rumble of the termites as they carved the wood” and “the snipping of the moths in the clothes closets”, language so vivid that you can almost hear the termites and moths hard at work, bringing about destruction. One of my absolute favourite lines is “The world must be all fucked up, when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.” The author’s ability to give life to inanimate objects is undeniably the most powerful tool used to impress upon the vividness of the world that he has created.

There are as many stories running in this book as there aren’t. This work is majorly a portrayal of journeys undertaken by several generations of a family who exist in each others’ presence in absolute solitude. They go around carrying the burden of life, each in their own way with their unique codes of life. However they do not remain unaffected from the actions and decisions of each other. It has a profound impact on shaping and driving the course of future generations. This is depicted in the strong metaphor Marquez uses of time going around in a circle. The characteristic traits of the family are unconsciously transcribed, adopted through heredity and translated sometimes across multiple generations, thus rendering it impossible to break the circle and making repetition of history unavoidable.

There are too many characters in the book to comment on them all. So I have picked a few to review. There is Jose Arcadio Buendia who is driven into madness with his un quenchable thirst for innovation, who sets the wheels in motion by giving rise to Macondo. There is his wife Ursula who has the undying need to set things right even in the face of calamities. The author makes a very powerful point using Ursula that as humans the understanding and comprehension of others around us doesn’t simply come about by seeing them. Our mental constructs of those around us rise from us being watchful and through the silence of observation, and not through the simple magic of sight.

Amaranta is a mighty character who spends her life nurturing with hatred the tender love she develops as a young girl. She dedicates her life and soul to the one person whom she deems responsible for snatching her love, as a result of which she tends and nurtures further passions in life, only to murder them mercilessly herself, when they become mature enough to leave the crib. It seems that her rival in love Rebecca holds onto dear life, despite her slow decay for decades, simply to spite her worthy opponent. Then there is Fernanda, she has been so miserable for so long that it has become a part of her person, she doesn’t ever notice it "Rain didn’t bother her, it had been raining all her life". She who goes through the motions of life unaffected, going through the charade meticulously just so she doesn’t have to face her misery and drown in it, perpetually avoiding the inevitable. There is such an array of complex characters that it is an enormous task attempting to do justice to all. All in all the manner in which the conclusion of the narrative has been executed is powerful in itself. It is a manifestation of the repetitive nature of life, drawing on the metaphor of time going around in circle, unless of course “it stumbles and has an accident, in which case it can splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room”.


A vivid, dialogue-scarce narrative, illustrating the cyclical nature of time and generational impacts within a family, brought to life through rich descriptions and complex characters.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - A review


This is the primary premise of the book “Animal farm” by George Orwell. The book starts off at a farm house where animals are holding a meeting, and the Old Major (the boar) is urging all the animals to revolt against farmer Jones. Humans are unproductive, parasitic, yet dominant over the hard working animals. Animals work hard and yet humans reap all the reward, leaving animals with nothing more than a temporary shelter for as long as they remain productive. Taking the old Major’s words to their heart, the animals overthrow Jones, run him off the farm and take it over for themselves, proclaiming all animals as equals on the farm.

Hence begins the saga of Orwell’s utopian novel, outlining the idiocy of human behaviour, with emphasis on the political structures of the communist society. When this book was first written it gained very little importance, on account of it being a satire and cynical piece, tearing apart the myths of the Soviet Communism. Here we are not going to discuss the political influences or implications of the book, instead let’s look at some patterns of human behaviour.

In the book, there are two main characters “Napoleon and Snowball” with opposing views and personalities, both eager to lead the animals (despite all animals being equal). The constant battle for power between the two leaders brings to light the greed of ambitious human beings to grab power with whatever means they can. If this means discrediting the opposing party by means of deceit, so be it. Just the way Napoleon not only overthrows Snowball with the help of his personal army, but also steals his ideas and presents them as his very own. There are references in the book throughout about the powerful leader placing blame of all calamities on the exiled leader. This is very reflective of human beings’ nature of rising and retaining power not by building ourselves up but by dragging others down.

In real life, we see the average person being used as a pawn to keep the powerful in power. This is depicted in the book as animals are constantly made to occupy their minds with one conspiracy or other, they are weaved into a web of never ending responsibilities and tasks that are posed to achieve their own betterment. This constant whirl wind of commotion created by leaders leaves very little room for thought or imagination. Peer pressure and fear of mockery also never allows one to question the forever changing rules to suit the needs of those in power. Such is the case of the rules written by animals themselves and how “all animals are equal” changes overtime into, “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”.

Orwell has successfully sketched the delicate play of (im)balance of power in the world. What is the take away? In our fight to seek justice, we inadvertently become what we try to avoid- “fours legs good, two legs better”!


In our fight to seek justice, we inadvertently become what we try to avoid.

Classics

The Trial - A review

One Hundred Years of Solitude - A review

Animal Farm - A review