Book Review: The Harappa Files by Sarnath Banerjee.

Book: The Harappa Files

Author: Sarnath Banerjee

Pages: 216

Read On: Hardback

How Long it Took Me To Read: 1 day...I took my time to marvel over the art.

Plot Summary: The Greater Harappa Rehabilitation, Reclamation and Redevelopment Committee (GHRRRC) has conducted a gigantic survey of the current ethnography and urban mythology of a country on the brink of great hormonal changes. Changes of such enormity that they would be barely comprehensible to civil society. And now, the decade-long findings are finally going to be made public by one Sri Sarnath Banerjee, who has created the Harappa Files, a series of graphic commentaries that analyse the cracks in post-liberalized India. Although impressed by the far-sightedness of the government in setting up the GHRRRC, Banerjee has one niggling concern: he is worried that the consequence of his project will be the release of the dreaded Harappa recommendations, making it mandatory for all citizens to sign the draconian, ultra-invasive Form 28B, giving the government the power to decide the fate of every single citizen,

General Thoughts: I read The Corridor last year and enjoyed it. I liked it but didn't love it. However, it made me want to read more from the author and the cover of this book and it's art style always appealed to me and I got my hand on it last month.

I LOVED this book...it is a work of beauty. :)

Things I Loved:

1. The art is beautiful. It merits being framed! I loved every single page of this book. The muted Earth-tones, the style f drawing was all just lovely!

2. The writing, though not much, was very good.

3. This book is essentially a commentary on life and society in India, and it does it well. Sharp, tongue-in-cheek and plain cheeky. This social commentary was a joy to read.

4. Also this book has oodles of nostalgia and I am very big on nostalgia. I loved every bit of 80s-90s reference in this book. #90sKid

5. There are little stories in this book and I loved every one of them.

6. There are also vignettes into people's lives and those were also very interesting.

7. This was just a wonderful book and I immensely enjoyed my time with it.

Rating: 4/5

Loved it and highly, highly recommend it!

Comments

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