Abhilash Melethil's Blog: Abhilash Melethil

Arundhati Roy’s clarity is impossible to deny. I have disagreed — and at times still disagree — with some of her ideas, especially her positions on Kerala politics. My sense has been that some of those views were shaped under the influence of certain Islamic fundamentalist groups here. Another disagreement, years ago, came from my […]

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In the earlier post, I mentioned that Browne wrote out of his experience of living in Norfolk. Sebald lived in Norwich, and Naipaul in Wiltshire. Sebald’s narrator writes by blending memory with the experience of walking through Suffolk. Naipaul’s narrator does essentially the same thing, though he stays rooted in one place. Later, when I […]

The post Reading – some more thoughts appeared first on abhilash melethil.

Although I had written this before, there was a time in my reading life when I avoided Rushdie and Naipaul after seeing them dismissed by Krishnan Nair (he was not really a critic but a literary journalist — which, to be fair, suits many so-called “critics” now as well). Later, however, I read two of […]

The post More on Reading – Again. appeared first on abhilash melethil.

A serious reader does not choose a book in isolation; it is always the sum of the people, times, and experiences they have passed through. That is what some online readers fail to grasp. The offline lives of people we see online—their ripenings, the choices they make, the things they embrace or abandon—cannot be known […]

The post The Act of Reading appeared first on abhilash melethil.

Adrian Tchaikovsky continues his prolific streak— it feels like every six months there’s something new from him. This time, it’s The Hungry Gods, set in yet another post-apocalyptic world filled with talking animals and birds. Was it as good as Shroud? For me, the answer is no. But with Tchaikovsky, there’s always something fresh to latch onto—some concept, […]

The post A Bunch of Prolific Writers appeared first on abhilash melethil.

Today, I came across a ridiculous post by a so-called poet of Malayalam, offering his take on Cherukad—one of the finest memoirists in our language. This poet attempts to trivialize Cherukad’s legacy with a shallow and dismissive commentary—an effort as superficial as his own poetry. Sadly, this is the sort of noise that thrives in […]

The post On Literary Trends, Activism, and Depth appeared first on abhilash melethil.

2025, Week 31 Daytripper – Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá Daytripper is a 10-part graphic novel series by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, later published as a single book. It follows Brás, a wannabe writer and the son of a renowned author. He writes obituaries for a local newspaper—work he finds dull but that turns […]

The post Recent Reads & Re-reads appeared first on abhilash melethil.

The prompts: 1. How many books have you read so far this year? Do you have a yearly reading goal? If so, how are you doing with it? I’ve read 63 books so far this year. I don’t set yearly goals — I never really have. This year started strong, and I just kept the […]

The post The 6 Down, 6 To Go Tag appeared first on abhilash melethil.

I had tried The Trees by Percival Everett before, but couldn’t quite get into it—largely due to the audio narration. I faced a similar issue with James, his clever retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That said, I finally revisited The Trees, and I’m glad I did. It starts off in Mississippi as a […]

The post Clever Adaptations appeared first on abhilash melethil.

The most impactful reading of the week was Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands. The sheer fact that British India once spanned from Lebanon to Burma is staggering. What’s even more mind-blowing is the idea that it was the narrow-mindedness of Indian leaders, who envisioned a future India aligned with their religious ideologies, that ultimately shaped the […]

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