News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

You are welcome to Colombia: a home of green land, bright sun and blue seas. The creatures of the environment enjoy the cool air and tales told by the whispering trees. Things changed as time progressed. The birth of one man changed the beautiful face that was once Colombia. The man's name is Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. He changed the scheme of things and introduced a monstrous existence with his mixed acts--drug sales, murder, kidnapping and internecine wars.

Give it to Gabriel Marquez narrating the ordeal faced by some citizens during these ugly times with an angry-beautiful pen. He was vested with the job of narrating things as they were in those bloody years in Medellin, Colombia. As usual, he didn't fail the reader. Every page flourishes like a flower with a thorny stem.

The kidnapped characters in the book begin to lose their mental stability as they were isolated and put away from the outside world's reality. After they were release, one could still feel their suffering as they struggled with memory and fitting into normal live. Columbia, one may conclude, will never forget those years with a book like this.

It is a story worth reading!

China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston

You don’t need to be a sinophile to enjoy this book. It is a tale that uncovers the remarkable experiences faced by a particular generation of a Chinese family; their journey to the Golden Mountain (the US) and the incidents they witness on the so-called Golden Mountain.

The author narrates, beautifully, the ‘good, bad and ugly’ nature of living as an immigrant. It is a beautiful-cocktail-story. However, one must sip it gradually to avoid an intoxication caused by the unapologetic movement between times.

‘All that you’ll and feel will be illusion’

                Through the eyes of the young narrator, the reader is forced to either sympathise or empathise with the families in the book.