Recently, one of my childhood friends shared a link to a nice article1. The article celebrated the 50th year of publishing of Frederick Forsyth’s, The Day of the Jackal. This classic spy thriller was published 50 years ago in 1971.
The article made me nostalgic. It made me go back to my growing up years, to reminiscent of the novels I read. I was never a discerning reader. I would read anything that I could lay my hands on. And there was no dearth of books at our home when I was growing up in the1960/the 70s. Reading books, or magazines, were part of my family culture. And I picked up the habit without even any conscious effort on my part.
I remember the hardcover books of Everyman’s Library publication that used to get delivered to our home frequently. Those were a series of reprints of English literary classics with high-quality print with beautiful dust-jackets. I remember the full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, all of 27 volumes, with the last volume as the addendum. There were a few more sets of books, like six volumes set of Popular Science, four volumes set of the English dictionary, and a few more sets, that I now do not remember their names.
There were also the full sets of Tagore, Saratchandra, Bakimchandra, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Complete Works of Vivekananda, and Gandhi, and of course, the weekly subscription of the Bengali literary magazine Desh. There were plenty of other books of different authors, subjects that I do not now remember. All those were in addition to my father’s ever-growing law books library.
And all those books were well-thumbed and frequently read by members of our extended family, and I am sure, by friends of the family members.
I also remember my grandfather reading books during the long afternoon after his mid-day meal on his periodic visits from Dhaka. Getting books as birthday presents were the norm in those days in our family, and I remember getting Pheluda books or Tintin comics or books by Enid Blyton on a few occasions. I remember reading most of the famous literary classics like Macbeth, Hamlet, or The Count of Monte Cristo in comic book format, much before I knew their value.
But all these do not mean that only hardback classics are read at home. There was no dearth of popular fiction of a paperback variety at home, both in English and Bengali.
As a child crosses the threshold to enter adolescence, he starts to explore. Reading books was my way of exploring the world. And reading books on any subject was never a taboo. A few books have left a mark on my mind during my early growing-up days. Few of them are classics in their own right, stood the test of time, and are still considered among the all-time best-seller lists. But some of them, I am sure, are highly forgettable.
Here is a list of 10 fiction that I read during my growing up years and would still love to read them now if and when I get the time. These books I read mostly between my later school and early college days. But there is no chronology here. As I do not now remember the sequence in which I read these books.
One of the first books that left a deep impression on my mind is The Godfather by Mario Puzo. I first read the book during my school days. I subsequently read the book so many times that I can remember every turn of events page by page. The sexual exploits of hot-headed Sonny Corleone, the ruthlessness of so-called good boy Michael Corleone, the cool-headed Tom Hagen, and even the heartless killer Luca Brasi, and of course, the unforgettable Don Corleone, all left a deep imprint in my growing imagination. Much before the phrase, ‘personal is political’ became popular, Godfather Don Corleone’s dictum was, ‘everything is personal’. Reading The Godfather, taught me never to contradict family in front of outsiders. The fissure within the family should never be exposed to outsiders.
I read and reread the book many times. I remember sharing the book with my friends as well. And finally, the book disintegrated completely, with a broken spine, loose and torn pages. The book is such a favorite of mine that I bought another edition after I grew up to read and reread it, at random, when I have nothing interesting to read.
I do not know what the literary critiques would say, but to me, The Godfather should be considered as one of the bestsellers of all time.
Even The Godfather movie, in three parts, made by Francis Ford Coppola, in my mind, is an all-time great movie. This is one of those movies that is an exact representation of the book. Almost frame by frame, the movie follows the book.
I loved the book so much that I even tried to read a few other books written by Mario Puzo. But I was disappointed. None of them were remotely comparable with The Godfather. I do not even remember the names of those books now.
French Revolution has given birth to a slew of literary masterpieces. In the forefront of the genre, I believe, are the masterpieces of the French author Alexander Dumas, with books like Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Black Tulip, and maybe a few more. All these are highly memorable books with lots of adventure and drama. These books have kindled the imaginations of generations of boys, girls and continue to do so. I read all these books during the time I was growing up.
Yet one book, of the same period, but may not be so popular, that I loved reading, and reread it just a few years back, is Scaramouche by Rafel Sabatini. I do not remember how I chanced upon the book. I have never seen any mention of the book anywhere. While doing some research to write this article, I was pleasantly surprised. I discovered that the book was made into a movie in 1952, starring Stewart Granger in the lead role.
This is a historical romantic adventure novel during the days of the French Revolution. The hero Andre-Louis Moreau is a cynical young lawyer with the gift of oratory who saw his close friend killed in an unjust duel by an aristocrat named Marquis de la Tour d’Azyr. Moreau did not know his parentage and lives with his godfather, an aristocrat himself. As Moreau spoke against this killing, his life was in danger.
To save himself, with revenge in mind, he ran away. The book chronicles his adventurous life. He first became an actor by joining a traveling theatre group to play the role of Scaramouch. Then the turn of events made him a fencing apprentice, which helped him to become a swashbuckling master swordsman. He then joined the revolutionaries and became a politician. There were also a few love interests in the course of his life’s drama. Whether he could take the revenge he always wanted to take or got to know about his parents, or could finally unite with his beloved, for all these details, you need to read the book.
And of course, the option of seeing the Hollywood period film is also there. But nothing, in my mind, to beat the pleasure of reading.
I presume spy thrillers remain an all-time favorite genre for adolescent boys. And I was no exception.
Who can forget a book like The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth? It was one of the first spy thrillers I read. And what a book! It had all the ingredients of a successful spy thriller at a time when electronics surveillance was not even remotely on the horizon. Everything used to be done in the old fashion ways. Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne were far away in the future.
But the main attraction of the narrative was the character of the protagonist named Jackal. He was thorough, meticulous, and ruthlessly focused to a fault. He was so secretive and so thorough in hiding his real identity that no one knew who he was. And his identity remained a mystery.
Another uniqueness of the novel is that the protagonist is the villain, the assassin, a contract killer. He is amoral. He took the contract to assassin French President Charles de Gaulle, a heavily guarded man. The authorities had no idea who he was. What they came to know was a piece of vague information. That an assassin, named Jackal, is hired to kill the President.
The police started a massive manhunt, but Jackal was always a step ahead of the authorities. The subterfuge, the multiple identities he used, the way he used and killed men and women ruthlessly was a marvel in its way. Though the man is a ruthless killer, yet the reader’s sympathy is always with him.
Actor Edward Fox played the Jackal in the movie and did a fantastic job in the rendition of a ruthless contract killer. I watched the movie much later, a well-made film. But the book remains an all-time favorite.
I think one of the most popular American fiction is Gone with The Wind by Margaret Mitchell, her magnum opus. When I read the book, it was already a generation old. It was first published in 1936. Yet, it still had the charm and appeal of the Southern lass, Scarlett O’Hara.
The story was set in Southern states of the USA during the American Civil war that saw the abolition of slavery.
Scarlett O’Hara was only 16 years old, not so beautiful an young girl but possessed a powerful ability to attract and charm men. She is intelligent, witty, stubborn, and wilful. She is the eldest daughter of a Southern planter brought up in riches and spoiled to the core. Yet like so many men in her life, you can do nothing but fall in love with her.
Her life gets entangled in the American civil war, as most men she knows, her suitors, get involved in the war. Through her life’s chronicle, we come to know about the Southern society of America and how the civil war changed all the set standards of the Southern society. Her life reflects the tumultuous time she lived in.
Her love affair with a much older man, Rhett Butler, was a tumultuous one. They married ultimately, but the marriage was not a happy one. They lost their only child in a freak accident and drifted apart.
She lost her husband, lost her child, her homestead Tara, was in shambles. The book ends with her going back to Tara with determination to get back her husband, Rhett Butler, whom she finally realized she loved, and rebuild the homestead.
That she is an optimist, and would not go down in despair and defeat, is proved at the end of the novel, when she thinks, “….after all, tomorrow is another day,” and resolves to rebuild her life anew.
Whenever I am down with life’s ordeals, this simple statement gives me immense strength to carry on despite all odds.
Alistair Maclean was one of my favorite authors during my school days. I presume all young growing boys of my days were fans of Alistair Maclean novels. The fast-paced narrative of the novels were full of action packed sequences, and gave an adrenalin rush to the young readers.
I read all the books he wrote during those days. All of them were my favorite. Later, I saw some of the films which were based on his novels like The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Force 10 from Navarone, Breakheart Pass, and Golden Rendezvous, to name a few.
But his novel Puppet on a Chain moved me most, though I never got to see the movie based on the novel. This book was the first spy novel I read, even much before I read the James Bond series by Ian Fleming. Maybe that is why it made such a deep impression on my mind. I just loved the character of the macho Interpol agent, Paul Sherman, and his professional, no-nonsense approach towards solving crime. He was a believer in the doctrine, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth approach.
Interpol agent Paul Sherman was after a drug racket. He went to Amsterdam to bust a drug deal, accompanied by two female operatives. The chase became dangerous as the novel progresses and one of the female operatives died. His investigation was affected by betryal and he must increasingly use violent means to crack the case. Sherman must not only have to save himself and the other operative, but also have to bust the smuggling racket.
Incidentally, the James Bond novels I did not enjoy much. But of course, James Bond movies are a different matter altogether.
My love affair with Barnard Shaw started when I entered graduation college. Shaw was a total departure from what I had read so far. A young boy growing up on a generous dose of crime, adventure, and war novels tends to romanticize war, chivalry, and death for a cause.
Shaw was everything but what I had read so far. He was anti-romantic, anti-war, and a Fabian socialist without being in your face. I loved his sarcastic, down-to-earth humor, and promptly fell in love with his characters. I even started identifying myself with some of his characters. One of them is Captain Bluntschli, the anti-romantic protagonist of his play Arms & The Man.
Arms & The Man by George Barnard Shaw is not a novel. It is an anti-romantic play and a comedy. GBS wrote a set of comedies and published them in a volume, named Plays Pleasant. Arms & The Man is the first play in that volume. It was also, Shaw’s first commercially successful play. The play deals with the futility of war and mocks the idealism of romantic love and deals with the hypocrisies of human nature.
I realized, reading this play, that there is no romanticism in war. It is a bloody and gory business. It is ruthless professionalism that helps one win a battle rather than romantic valour. There is no valor in dying when one has taken shelter in a barn running from the enemy and that barn catches fire. There is no chivalry in dying when the enemy charges and you do not have ammunition to shoot. I learned that it makes more sense to hide foodstuff in the holster rather than ammunition and that there is nothing unmanly in eating chocolates when one faces death.
The critiques accuse Shaw as a propagandist. But for me, reading Shaw was waking up to reality. A reality, which is far removed from the romanticism of war. A reality where platonic love is a sham. That I am against all kinds of war, maybe because of this play, I read in my early youth.
I read this play Arms and The Man several times. A few years back, I read it again with my elder daughter, when she had the play as part of her graduation syllabus. And I enjoyed every moment of it.
One may be against war, yet war and romantic love influenced human imagination through generations. When it comes to war, war heroes, and their love, Napoleon Bonaparte was a good contender.
Desiree by Annemarie Selinko is a historical novel on Napoleon Bonaparte’s first love. Like most first love it remained unfulfilled. Desiree was a young girl when she became engaged to a dashing promising army officer, Napoleon Bonaparte. Later, they parted ways but their tender affection remained.
The format of the novel is like a diary by Desiree, and we, as the readers, get to know in detail the condition of French society after the French Revolution. We also get to meet the other family members of Napoleon, who like parasites, are dependent on Napoleon’s success for bettering their lives.
Napoleon is portrayed as a ruthless yet tragic figure with a lot of charisma and even sometimes likable.
We witness how a young naive girl Desiree evolves into a mature young woman and finds true love and finds the true merit of a man who loves her - Bernadotte, the future king of Sweden.
It is a touching romantic story and more than a historical romance, as the author successfully deals with the political intrigues of the time.
There are very few books that are equally good as a novel and as a movie. One such book is Rebecca by Daphanie du Maurier. When I read the book, I did not know that a director, no less than Alfred Hitchcock, had also made a highly successful film on the novel. Later I saw the movie as well. Now, after so many years, I am not sure, the impression I have is of the book I read or the film I watched.
It is a gothic love story written as a thriller. The novel was written in a style that I have found in no other novel. Rebecca is long gone. But her shadow looms large over the life of the present heroine, who remained unnamed throughout. By the end of the novel, one wonders, who, in reality, is the main protagonist of the novel? The present naive young wife of the wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, or his dead wife, notorious for her ways when she was alive?
Though a love story, the novel has all the ingredients of a dark gothic thriller where the suspense is held till the last chapter. The novel draws the character of a young naive girl, married to a rich landed man, and how she matures during the novel.
I have always been a fan of Agatha Christie and read almost all her detective novels. Well, not all but most of the novels. I still feel that she is the best author who could create a cloud of mystery, which apparently looked beyond human comprehension, and then, clears that cloud with expert reasonings. Each of her novels are masterpieces, works of art, that made mystery, crime and detective novels a respectable genre.
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie is a supernatural detective novel and is not like any of her other novels. This I understand, is the only supernatural novel Christie wrote in her long writing career.
The plot of the story revolves around a series of unnatural deaths which the police could not understand. The deaths occurred due to some occult and witchcraft activities. The young hero suspects that something is amiss, and he is drawn into the mystery. The story unravels a dark plot with a lot of witchcraft leading to a series of unexplainable deaths. Ultimately the mystery is solved and an explanation of all the unnatural deaths were revealed to the readers.
There are a lot of unexplained phenomena that we experience during our lives, though all may not be as dark and dangerous as the story of this novel. But most of the unexplainable phenomena can be explained if one cares to investigate them in the right spirit.
This is one book that made me sceptical about everything unnatural. It is our ignorance and mistaken understanding of things happening around us, that make us believe on unnatural phenomena.
It would not be fair if I fail to include a novel in this list that had made a deep impression on me when I first read the book during my early college days.
This is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Her other book, The Atlas Shrugged, read together with The Fountainhead, encompasses her philosophy. She was the proponent of objectivism as a philosophy and described objectivism as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".
Though the book made a deep impression during that time, now in my mature years, I feel we have walked a long way from her philosophy. I need to read her books now again to conclude about her philosophy.
Notwithstanding her philosophy, I think these two novels are, if not masterpieces, at least stand to a lot of merits.
The present generation of readers may or may not have read any of these books. The time has changed. The cold war is over. What was like science fiction in our days has started to become a possibility. Social media and computer games are eating away most of the pleasure time of the young. OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime are the priority of entertainment over reading fiction. The magical reality of Murakami is the new kid in town when it comes to reading fiction.
So, if I can motivate any young reader of the present generation to read any of the books I loved reading, I shall consider this to have been a worthwhile effort.
Someday I intend to write about the non-fiction books I read during this period that shaped my thought.
Till then, au revoir.
This post is dedicated to my school friend Srijit, whose sharing this article triggered me to write this piece.
10 Wonderful Fictions I Read During My Growing Up Years