ME & MY SHELF - The Cairo Trilogy

Author-journalist, film-maker and founder of the Draco Books publishing company, Janaki Lenin specializes in writing about wildlife and conservation practices in India. She is the author of My Husband and Other Animals, A King Cobra’s Summer and her latest, Every Creature Has A Story.

- ISHANINANDI

The Cairo Trilogy

BY NAGUIB MAHFOUZ, Everyman’s Library,

The sprawling saga of three generations of an Egyptian family living through the colonial period could have easily been set in India. It can be read as following in the grand old tradition of epic storytelling, of deception, oppression and conflict of breathtaking proportions. Or it could be read as a metaphor for the political turmoil destabilizing Egypt, then and now.

Zorba The Greek

BY NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS,

I identified with the author-narrator as he comes under the influence of Zorba, a larger-than-life character who ruminates about the big questions in life—war, religion, morality. It’s the great Greek tragedy given a modern twist.

Vernon God Little

BY D. B. C. PIERRE, Faber,

The death penalty, pedophilia, school shootings, and a corrupt justice system in the US make for a dark tale. But Pierre serves it with liberal lashings of satire delivered in a Texan drawl.

Barkskins

BY ANNIE PROULX, Scribner,