Quick Reads
Volume 30, Issue 11
by Kamila HinkstonArshad Khan
Riveting research
Who knew a doctoral thesis could be so exciting?
Rana Bose’s second novel, The Fourth Canvas, somehow manages to make a story about one man’s troubles finishing his doctorate into an intellectual thriller.
A Mexican philosopher and painter, Guillermo Sanchez is found dead in the Seine River in France in the mid-’70s. Thirty years later, Claude Chiragi, a disillusioned McGill scholar, takes up the task of deciphering Sanchez’s intricately detailed paintings for his PhD thesis. Claude’s girlfriend, Clara, gives him one of Sanchez’s paintings for his birthday and they quickly realize it must be part of a series. They begin a search that takes them around the world, hoping to get a better idea of the message Sanchez was trying to convey.
The Fourth Canvas is driven by a series of significant transformations in each of the main characters. At first, each separate story seems too distinct to ever create anything coherent, but they do come together to form an interesting tale in the end.
Be warned, however, that The Fourth Canvas is, after all, about a doctoral thesis. It does get a little academic at times, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.
3.5/5
—Kamila Hinkson
The Fourth Canvas
Rana Bose
TSAR Publications
240 pp
A strong Case against the military
A Case of Exploding Mangoes is an award winning novel by first-time author Mohammad Hanif, a BBC journalist and ex- Air Force pilot. Hanif explores the world of the British military system that has thwarted the progress of Pakistan for most of its 62-year existence in this dark and engrossing novel.
The book succinctly deals with U.S.-backed dictator General Zia ul Haq’s contempt for democracy and freedom of speech.
Mangoes tells the tale of how the universe seemingly conspired to get rid of this nasty dictator in the 1988 airplane crash that also took with it the cream of Pakistan’s military crop along with the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan.
We hear the perspective of a hot-blooded Air Force cadet Ali Shigri, a poor blind girl named Zainab and a nameless crow who all seem to have something to do with the crash that took the country out of the grips of a tyrannical, fanatic dictator… at least for a few years until General Musharraf took the reigns.
To this day, however, the seeds of General Zia’s rule bear fruit in the form of teenaged suicide bombers exploding all over the country. Mangoes documents the paving of this road to hell.
4.5/5
—Arshad Khan
A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Mohammed Hanif
Vintage
336 pp
$15.00
The Link Volume 31 Issue 01