Half a percent

"There is only one sin, and that is theft... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.”

This novel, by an expatriate Afghani author, explores guilt, betrayal and redemption in Afghanistan. The narrator is Amir, son of a wealthy Pashtan father ('Baba'), whose mother died giving birth to him. His closest friend is Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant Ali: his mother ran away when he was little. The Hazara (the ethnic group to which Hassan and Ali belong) are oppressed, discriminated against and mocked. Baba, to young Amir's horror, treats Hassan as well as he treats Amir himself. The boys enjoy the traditional Afghan sport of kite-fighting, and Hassan is Amir's 'kite runner', pursuing the conquered kites with preternatural accuracy.

...here they still were, since they were not the dead ones, under the weary yellow lighting, sharing the unspoken knowledge that, every night the bombers came, ten thousand possible exits from life opened silently, and unpredictably, and without appeal, down which anyone and anything could fall. [loc. 4817]

My initial review: rereading for this 'proper review' was sheer delight, and I am eager to read the second half of this duology.

The story begins in August 1939. Iris Hawkins lives in a Clapham boarding house, works at a City brokerage, and is fascinated by economics. One evening, she flees a disastrous date and ends up at a bohemian dance club, where she encounters the other two protagonists: Geoff Hale, a gawky engineer who works for the BBC, and Lall Cunningham, the icy recipient of Geoff's unrequited love. Iris intends her seduction of Geoff to be a one night stand, but things become more complicated ( Read more... )

... all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men’s acts, even the terrible became banal. [p. 130]

Technically a reread, but when I read this at the age of 14 or 15,  I didn't really understand it: I recalled very little of characters, themes or incidents.

The brilliant physicist Shevek comes to realise that the collectivist society of Annares, a moon colonised by an anarchist movement, is not conducive to his work. He travels to the 'home world', Urras, which is ebulliently capitalist. Eventually he realises that Urras, too, stifles his scientific creativity.

Some thoughts burrow into your mind as thoroughly as a wasp larva burrows into an unsuspecting caterpillar. [loc. 3387]

Set in North Carolina in 1899, this novel taught me more than I ever wanted to know about various parasitic insects. The narrator, Sonia Wilson, is a scientific illustrator who's accepted a position with the reclusive Dr Halder, who lives in an isolated, decaying house in the woods. En route, Sonia's local guide warns darkly that he's seen the Devil in these woods, but Sonia has been raised by a scientist and discounts this as mere superstition.