Neel Mukherjee, thankfully, is not one of those writers, as his stunning third novel, A State of Freedom, proves. His latest book starts off benignly enough, but it doesn't take long at all for him to twist the knife, letting the reader know that this isn't going to be a saccharine, feel-good story. It's a brutal novel that gets darker and darker, and it's as breathtakingly beautiful as it is bleak.
A Kind Of Freedom: A Novel Book Pdf
The centerpiece of the novel is the story of a vagrant and his bear. Desperate for money, a man named Lakshman finds a bear cub, and with the help of a trainer, teaches it how to dance. Lakshman is a vicious and pitiable character; he beats and humiliates his wife and subjects his bear to unspeakable cruelty. He recognizes that he's turned into something terrible: "And Lakshman laughs and laughs and laughs until the stick drops from his hand and, with his sweaty palms, he is wiping his snot and tears and drool and trying to stop the sobs that come out of the stranger he has become." It's a brutal story, almost physically painful to read, but out of the horror, Mukherjee finds a kind of terrible beauty.
This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.
The Age of Reason and The Reprieve were published together after the war in September 1945. "Sartre was by now France's leading intellectual voice, and the novels, not least because they defined a critical period in French history, were received with great enthusiasm by the French public."[9] However, some reviews were mixed. Louis Parrot writing for Les Lettres francaises said, "Jean-Paul Sartre has definitely taken his place among the greatest French writers of our day... His powerful talent has affirmed itself with rare brilliance." Gaéton Picon writing for Confluences said, "If Sartre's ambition was to force the doors of literary history, he has succeeded.. Like all great novelists, he also enjoys the privilege of having a universe of his own." However, Louis Beirnart, writing for Etudes, said, "If books could smell, one would have to hold one's nose in front of Sartre's latest books... Sartre's objective is, very clearly, to show life through its excrement and lower the value of existence to the level of the gutter and the dump."[10] Orville Prescott, writing for The New York Times, mentioned "His Cast of Characters Dull".[11]
Extracts of the third novel in the trilogy, Iron in the Soul (or Troubled Sleep), appeared in the journal Les Temps Modernes in January and June 1949,[12] and it was published in book form later that year. The reviews were not good. As for the reception, Sartre scholar Michel Contat says: Troubled Sleep "failed to provoke the anticipated and promised positive responses, as critics transferred their moral disappointment into an accusation that [Troubled Sleep] represented an exhaustion of Sartre's literary creativity. Although Sartre always said that he accorded no importance to the judgments of literary reviewers, his partial failure in their eyes intimidated him in the face of the fourth volume..."[13] Consequently, Sartre was unable to complete the series.
The coming of age novel has received top marks from critics and readers, but also some challenges as well in schools and libraries because it contains profanity and sexually explicit scenes. Some parents felt that the book was inappropriate for younger readers due to its LGBTQIA themes, while others thought its content was not sufficiently age-appropriate. 2ff7e9595c