• Top Story
  • Weekly
  • Latest
  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • Interview
  • Feature
  • Sports
  • News
  • J&K
  • World
  • Education
  • Health
  • Economy
  • Culture
  • Literature
  • Lifestyle
  • Books
What's Hot

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

January 8, 2025

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Trending
  • Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?
  • Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public
  • America’s Waning Global Position
  • Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir
  • Hundreds of Sheep Face Starvation as Forest Officials Bar Grazing
  • Photo Essay: Fire Fighting Service In Dal Lake
  • Pheran—How Kashmir’s Traditional Attire Evolved Through Centuries
  • Pheran—How Kashmir’s Traditional Attire Evolved Through Centuries
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
 Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed
  • Weekly

    Weekly Dec 25 – Dec 31, 2022

    December 25, 2022

    Weekly Dec 05 – 11 Dec,2022

    December 7, 2022

    Weekly Nov 28 – Dec 04, 2022

    November 30, 2022

    Weekly November 21-27

    November 22, 2022

    Weekly November 14-20

    November 16, 2022
  • News
    1. India
    2. South Aisa
    3. World
    Featured
    Recent

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024
  • Feature
    1. Interview
    2. Literature
    3. Editorial
    4. Opinion
    5. Top Story
    6. Books
    7. View All

    Interview: ‘Travel, Observing and Tasting is the Best Way to Learn’

    October 2, 2023

    AS Dulat’s Kashmir Stories

    February 4, 2023

    Interview: ‘People are Deeply Pained by Mirwaiz’s Absence from Jamia Masjid’

    November 16, 2022

    ‘Abrogation of Article 370 has Made Kashmir More Dangerous than 1990s’

    October 18, 2022

    The Poet of Love—Daagh Dehlvi’s Poetry has Native Idiom and Sufi Undercurrent

    May 30, 2023

    The Breadth and Sweep of Sahir Ludhianvi’s Works

    March 8, 2023

    Memories of Gulmarg

    January 28, 2023

    ‘If This Language Lives On, Rahi Also Lives On’

    January 18, 2023

    Kashmir Needs Collective Fight against Glaring Drug Abuse

    December 27, 2022

    Healthcare Emergency

    December 7, 2022

    Traffic Mess: Who is to Blame? 

    November 30, 2022

    Give the Artists the Space They Need

    November 23, 2022

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024

    Writer’s Block What!

    October 8, 2023

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024

    Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

    September 12, 2024

    Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

    September 12, 2024

    Book Review: The Divine Dialect of Flowers

    October 5, 2023

    The Collision That Birthed Religion

    March 18, 2023

    Book Review: What is the Meter of the Dictionary?

    March 2, 2023

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024

    Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

    September 12, 2024
  • J&K

    Hundreds of Sheep Face Starvation as Forest Officials Bar Grazing

    March 14, 2024

    Photo Essay: Fire Fighting Service In Dal Lake

    March 8, 2024

    Tatakooti—Challenges of Owning a Towering Peak

    October 5, 2023

    Interview: ‘Travel, Observing and Tasting is the Best Way to Learn’

    October 2, 2023

    What is Ailing the Apple Farming?

    September 16, 2023
  • Lifestyle

    Eating Together Binds Families

    November 22, 2022

    How Smartphones are Harming Children

    October 25, 2022

    Raising a Champion

    October 11, 2022

    The Reluctant ‘Urban Poor’

    August 28, 2022

    The Reluctant ‘Urban Poor’

    August 21, 2022
  • Economy

    Explained: What is a Credit Score and Why is it Important?

    December 27, 2022

    Rights of Special Bank Customers

    November 30, 2022

    How to be a Socially Responsible Investor

    November 23, 2022

    Stock Exchange Crimes

    November 16, 2022

    Avoid Debt Trap

    November 8, 2022
  • Culture
  • Entertainment
  • Sports

    Tatakooti—Challenges of Owning a Towering Peak

    October 5, 2023

    When Salim was in the Mood

    July 12, 2023

    Why Does Team India Fail Consistently?

    December 27, 2022

    Hail Ben Stokes and Co.

    December 7, 2022

    England Tour of Pakistan

    November 30, 2022
 Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed
Home»Books»Book Review: Resistance is a Human Attribute that No Totalitarian System Can Suppress
Books

Book Review: Resistance is a Human Attribute that No Totalitarian System Can Suppress

Kashmir NewslineBy Kashmir NewslineSeptember 27, 2022No Comments5 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

 

By Santosh Bakaya

‘Minotaur: A dark tale of power-crazy leaders’ is a blistering book, gut-wrenching in its intensity and powerful in its impact. A book for the present times. A book for all times. Exciting. Full of intrigue. A roller coaster ride that sets a reader’s pulse racing.

Penned by Sunil Sharma, the Toronto-based writer, academic, critic, and editor of a bilingual journal, Setu, the book got the coveted Nissim International Prize for Excellence in English Literature (Prose for the year 2022) selected from submissions from across the world.
‘The ghosts appeared abruptly at midnight and easily blended with the surrounding shadowy background’. Thus begins Minotaur, uncannily from the Epilogue. [Kind of Epilogue to those fast fading years – now history forever. Old Caesar was dead and new Caesar was born.] Does the beginning carry within itself the seeds of its own end? One wonders!
Who are these ghosts, the readers start racking their brains, in befuddled confusion.
“In fact, ghosts were highly-motivated insurgents who struck out swiftly at government targets and then simply evaporated in thin air, leaving no trace.”
“The gloomy city was violently painted in orange-red splashes of the leaping golden fires that singed the overcast nightly skies.”
‘Ghosts were there that night for their decisive contribution to a coming carnage’.
Well.  Enough said about ghosts. Let us move over to the despots.

“Centuries hung over the room, layer upon layer, with their sinister dark secrets and the intrigues of the former rulers.’
Words like these pull the reader deeper and deeper into the myriad layers, where we are awed by the serene sublimities of nature trying to hijack the grotesqueries of the narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, hubristic despots.
We are surrounded by bloody civil war, rampant fear, bombed-out buildings, smouldering ruins, ferocious tanks, and machine guns ripping apart a wounded city, blasting their way into its bleeding heart in volatile Latin America.
This multi-nuanced novel Minotaur – half-bull, half-man, unofficially called Butcher, is a novel of epic proportions. The contemporaneity of the theme of this dark tale of power-crazy despots is highly interesting, the plot twists thrilling, and the delicate play on words riveting.
In this very well–researched book, we find the writer writing about the shenanigans of the power-hungry megalomaniacs, and then it is as though dipping his pen in different ink, he starts writing about the sublimating power of nature: the soothing moonlight, the serenity and tranquility of the night, the silver-hued vastness of the sky with a felicity, which is immensely heartwarming.
“The glacial bowl in the sky smiled and the stars broke into a silvery stardust that rained down in shafts of moonlight.”
We see the ageless moon and before we can blink, the Rabbit in the moon gives a one-toothed smile. Well, you are wonderstruck!
Some lines remain with the reader throbbing on with an ominous clarity, a gut-wrenching prophecy, encapsulating the wisdom of long-held aphorisms.
“A man gets insane if he no longer listens to his conscience. When he allows to silence dissidence. When he murders democracy. When he carries blood of innocents.”
“Statecraft is not very different from the mafia. You have to be ruthless, in order to remain at the top. Call it like that. Darwin called it survival of the fittest. Some call it a jungle.”

“But no paid army can destroy the willpower of angry impoverished and dispossessed young losers”.

As one reads on, like one of the characters in the book, one is suddenly struck by an epiphany of a simple truth, profound in implications, that the resistance to power is a human attribute and a desire, as ancient as the unjust world, a uniquely human quality which could never be suppressed by the most totalitarian system of the world, at any period of time.

Readers are also treated to the cameo appearances of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and magic realism, where the ‘strange and the empirical, dead history and suspended present, the fantasy and the real’, seamlessly merge together, flowing like a powerful stream.
When I closed the book, lines from Shelley’s sonnet, Ozymandias, reminding one about the utter futility of power, kept hammering at my head.

I also found myself nodding vigorously in sync with the wisdom that one comes across the pages, ‘that the organic relationship between man and nature, now no longer possible in the advanced world, is still the best model of human development.”

In the second chapter, a cinematic aura engulfs one as the Harara storytellers start relating stories around a campfire: “The brilliant light of the campfire had lit up the surroundings in an orange color, in a leaping irregular pattern, and the faces of the spell-bound tensed audience were all red-hued in the dancing broken flames, listening to the musical stories under a sky dotted with twinkling diamonds and a full silvery moon washing the vast dome in her white cool light.”

It was with bated breath that I saw men, with painted faces, blood-shot eyes, feathered heads, and disheveled hair, shouting rhythmically to the beat of drums, strains of flutes and tom-toms, dancing and clapping with an ecstatic fervour, quickly making the reader merge with the audience, enjoying every clap, every tongue of fire, putting the reader under a spell.
Because of the novel’s cinematic effects, I felt that the book could easily be adapted into a movie. It has all the required thrills, chills, plot twists, fantastical elements and a tense rhythm.

This highly gripping book needs to reach more and more readers, adorning every bibliophile’s library.

 

Santosh Bakaya is an internationally acclaimed award–winning poet and author.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Kashmir Newsline
  • Website

Related Posts

Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

September 12, 2024

Book Review: The Divine Dialect of Flowers

October 5, 2023

The Collision That Birthed Religion

March 18, 2023

Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

Top Posts

Team India’s Next Big Thing

July 6, 202227,463 Views

Why This Alpine Lake Trek Stands Out

July 6, 202225,423 Views

India’s Majoritarian Politics and the Role of Media

July 6, 202224,120 Views

Fragile Media Economies and Lack of Opportunities in Kashmir

July 6, 202223,225 Views
Don't Miss
Top Story

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

By Kashmir NewslineJanuary 8, 20250

BRI’s transformative potential extends beyond economic development. It has the power to reshape global trade…

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024

Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

September 12, 2024
Stay In Touch
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest creative news from SmartMag about art & design.

Based out of Srinagar (Jammu & Kashmir) and brought out in print as a weekly with online presence as well, Kashmir Newsline is solely committed to ethical, fearless journalism. We at Kashmir Newsline cover politics, geopolitics, international relations, social issues, health, sports and almost everything else as objectively as humanly possible. Kashmir Newsline carries detailed reports and in-depth analysis on multiple developments happening in Kashmir and around the world.

Facebook X (Twitter)
Our Picks

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

January 8, 2025

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024
Most Popular

Team India’s Next Big Thing

July 6, 202227,463 Views

Why This Alpine Lake Trek Stands Out

July 6, 202225,423 Views

India’s Majoritarian Politics and the Role of Media

July 6, 202224,120 Views
Facebook X (Twitter)
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Politics
  • J&K
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us
© 2025 Kashmir Newsline. Designed by NexG IT Solutions.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Go to mobile version