“I don’t feel any of the guilt normally attached to ‘plagiarism,’ which seems to me organically connected to creativity itself.”
– Jonathan Lethem
The books that have intrigued me the most in recent years are those that synthesize diverse forms of experiences and diverse genres. These quotes, which I have taken from David Shields’ Reality Hunger, are not meant to encourage people from copying out large sections from other writers’ work and passing it off as their own. [break]
Bhashwor Ojha
Instead, they are meant to question a dominant idea of originality prevalent in art and literature. In my view, originality does not consist in the discovery and expression of new experience. Humans share a world and share experiences, and there is nothing that is fundamentally unique to any individual. The task of the writer is to assimilate as much of human experience as he or she can – through their own direct experiences, observations, conversations, travels, reading and exposure to other cultural forms.
ABOUT ADHIKARI
Aditya Adhikari is a journalist who wrote a regular political column for The Kathmandu Post between 2008 and 2012. More recently, he completed a book on the history of Nepal’s Maoist rebellion. Tentatively titled You Can Tear Down Lenin’s Statue, the book will be published next year. Adhikari says that he reads both to satisfy his curiosity about the world and for pleasure.
Right from his childhood, Adhikari had a passion for reading books, which he believes, may even have driven his career. Although he usually reads non-fiction books that deal with real-life scenarios, Adhikari values literary works and works of fiction as equally important. He mostly reads books on history, politics and p
olitical theory, but he also has a passion for literature.
“All humans are shaped by the social and political conditions of their societies,” Adhikari says. “The study of history is therefore essential if people are to understand themselves and their place in the world.”
ADHIKARI’S five picks
My Struggle Volumes 1 and 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The six volumes of My Struggle caused a sensation when they were published in Knausgaard’s native Norway between 2009 and 2011. Knausgaard used to write novels. But he got bored with creating characters and constructing elaborate plots, and wanted to write a narrative that was as close to his life as possible. The result was My Struggle. In the first two volumes, he describes in great detail the death of his father, how he fell in love and had children, the social and political life of Norway and Sweden during his lifetime, and his views on literature and art. This may sound slow going, and it sometimes is, but Knausgaard’s narrative is hypnotic, not least for his unflinching honesty. I look forward to reading the remaining four volumes as they are translated into English over the next few years.
The Rings of Saturnby W.G. Sebald
Walter Benjamin said: “All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.” The four novels that Sebald published before his untimely death in 2001 (Vertigo, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Austerlitz) did precisely that. In fact, they can only loosely be described as novels: they mix autobiography, history, literary criticism, photography, and fiction, and it is often difficult to point out where one mode ends and another begins. I devoured these books one after another in 2002 and regularly return to them. It is difficult for me to choose between these books. I picked The Rings of Saturn simply because it might be the easiest entry into Sebald’s writings.
Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng
Many of the Nepali Maoists regard the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the pinnacle of revolutionary attainment. Others consider the widespread chaos and brutality of the Red Guards to be emblematic of the failures of Communism. Having developed a strong interest in Communist history in recent years, I’ve read many histories of the Cultural Revolution and memoirs by people who were victimized during that event. Life and Death in Shanghai was the most memorable of these books. It is a memoir of a wealthy woman who was imprisoned and tortured for six years during the 1960s and early 1970s. The writer’s experiences as described in the book are harrowing, but she never loses her capacity for analytic detachment. As a result, she achieves an unparalleled understanding of the causes of and impulses behind the Cultural Revolution.
The Story of My Assassins by Tarun Tejpal
Since I read this book in 2009, I have recommended it to more than a dozen friends and they have almost all been enthralled by its relentless narrative drive and dark humor. Like many other novels and books of reportage published by Indian writers in recent years, The Story of My Assassins seeks to reveal the underbelly of Indian society. But Tejpal, having been a journalist for decades, has a deeper knowledge of the way power operates in India and how it excludes and victimizes large sections of the population than most writers. This novel is the one of the most scathing indictments of Indian society that I have read.
Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1914-1949 by Lucien Bianco
This is a book that does not appear to be widely read. I randomly picked it up over a decade ago. The few historical works I had read until then were full of descriptions and events. It was as though they sought to emulate novels. This book, in contrast, was a series of essays analyzing broad trends in Chinese society and politics in the decades before Mao took over the Chinese state. I can’t recall the specific details of the book but remember the impact it had on me. It made me see how academic analysis, if carried out with verve and imagination, can become as compelling as the best of literature.
As told to Nisha Bhatta
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