The Shepherd: by Frederick Forsyth.

My kindle edition claimed 700 pages and so it was astonishing to finish it in an hour or so in one afternoon, having expected the usual Forsyth tale with detail, worldwide canvas and more. One had to check to make sure the kindle had delivered the whole book! It had, and then one realises it was published in '75 or so, and perhaps the number of pages is explained by the illustrations. Still, one is left wanting more, to begin with. Not that the story is unsatisfactory by itself, quite the contrary, it is beautiful and perhaps ends just right when it should rather than going on. But one does want more when one is just finished reading.

The synopsis everywhere pretty much tells what it is about, although it does not say how beautifully it is written. Quite lyrical, unlike most work of this author, although that is not to say his other works are lesser, merely different. This one is comparable rather to works of Richard Bach and James Hilton in its qualities of lyrical beauty. There is suspense of course, a matter of life and death, and more.

And the Mountains Echoed; by Khaled Hosseini.

The author attempts another form of telling this story in this work, with separate stories across the time spanned by the whole centred on various characters and woven together by the common thread of the narrative. So one gets a deeper understanding of each one, for the duration, and a comprehensive one of the whole.

In his previous works too the author has made one aware that terrible doings are not necessarily patented by any one particular sect or organisation, and instead are rather a part of human characters that some choose to succumb to or indulge in while others stay clear of or rise above. In this one too, while he does not refrain from mentioning the atrocities by various politico-terror organisations, he brings out horrors perpetrated by people for private reasons that are as mundane as division of property within the family and clan, or stealing property that belongs to someone now poor and in need of it.

The stories take one across the world with the characters forced to or choosing to travel, migrate and take refuge in various countries for various reasons, usually seeking to find peace that they can live and prosper in. There is cultural diversity therefore, and a kaleidoscopic change of shifting patterns as people from Afghanistan, France, Greece and US move back and forth across, bringing their own cultures and languages and meeting others of diverse backgrounds.

And of course he depicts goodness and nobility of human characters, but not in expected ways or places, rather more in a variety of ways small and large. Often good comes accidentally to someone despite it being not quite clear that such was the intention, for an obvious example when a woman of mixed French and Afghan background who is rendered incapable of bearing her own children - due to some medical procedure she underwent early - adopts a little Afghan girl from a poor family, and eventually takes her to France to live in an attempt to survive. Whatever the loss the girl suffers of her family and connections, it is obvious it is good for her not only for survival but blossoming of a life and mind that would have been unthinkable back home with her family had she not been taken away.

One rather wishes the story would go on and fill gaps left about various characters, and go further, the way one wishes a just finished cup of coffee or tea would continue for a while longer. Perhaps the author would do so at that and tell us what happened to everyone. And this is the success of his work.
................................................................................


In an amazing detail he makes the little Afghan girl of poor farmer family adopted and brought to France to grow up to not only choose Mathematics for her studies but do well enough to go on to be on faculty in Paris and retire only for reasons of health, and have a good life with a family meanwhile with a French husband and three children of her own to boot, with grandchildren galore yet. And the details mentioned of her work in Mathematics are meticulously done so it is not ridiculous either.

It takes someone with some familiarity of the world of science and of western social life to know what a miracle he has painted so very casually. Not because this woman is of another culture, another race, but simply because she is a woman, and west does not tolerate women with careers without penalty of family and peace of mind in any field, even fashion that one would think would be a womens' own field, much less science which is seen as male club and Mathematics which is the very central ivory tower therein.
.................................................................................

Inferno; by Dan Brown.

Brown takes one topic for each work of his and presents a thoroughly researched expose thereof with a thin veil of a murder mystery, and this time it is about the very factual problem of today, where all dire scenarios of future have all sorts of interconnected roots with one chief problem, overpopulation. Also, in this work he goes back to his first two works in the sense of a background from history, art, literature and so forth, deeply rich and contextual for the problem. Da Vinci Code had Leonardo Da Vinci and his works along with history of Europe, west Asia and Rome of two millennia, while Angels and Demons had church and Illuminati and a short lived pope that might have been murdered; this work has Dante, Virgil, Vasari, bible of course, and other works related to concept of hell and inferno as depicted in various systems related to church. Needless to say he portrays east vs west in a very limited way as church vs Islam.

Inferno here is both the problem - problems that come together in the current scenario and their future outlooks for earth and humanity - and solution thereof. Any solution to human population growth and its devastating effects on earth of today must deal with question of reproductive rights and of course resulting human rights of survival, and in past this was taken care of by nature with various calamities such as plague or war and deaths of infants and mothers in childbirth - all of which are today receding with increasing of human knowledge and widening of consciousness, to the extent that very concept of an inevitable death past a certain age is now challenged, and natural relief from overpopulation can only be a far lower rate of reproduction.

For obvious reasons such as racism that is still very rampant, this possibility of such a tool for culling of reproduction cannot be in hands of a powerful institution that might thereby use it to wipe out population seen as unimportant, and one can imagine scenarios where a government in possession of such a tool may wipe out a few poor nations. Or continents.

So here a genius scientist works alone to solve this, and leaves clues about his work admittedly due to an egotistic need to be acclaimed for relieving humanity from the hell it is inadvertently descending into - overpopulation, global warming, wiping out forests and species galore, and effects of any and all of these.

Most people in any glimmer of this assume it is a virus related to a plague that is being released and race to stop it, finding out that it is too late to do so, and trying to discover what virus, what effects, what if any solutions might exist. What they discover however that it is a virus quite different from what they all imagined, bringing not death but a permanent solution to the problem, and is in the long term benevolent. The remainder is sort of anticlimactic, and leaves only one question that most readers would not realise exists.

Populations culled at a certain rate worked for the best is an observation and the virus goes towards affecting it in a certain way, in Brown's Inferno. However, he fails to see that in reality his solution might cull population at twice that rate at most, and certainly there would not be any guarantee that it could be limited to the rate he states is ideal, unless a very organised reproduction was arranged throughout the world. Sheer calculation and a small error that he has perhaps missed.