Optimism of the intellect: A year in books—Part 1
Published on: 1 January 2024, 02:42 pm
The Leaflet presents to you a curated list of books from 2023, perhaps for 2024. Happy reading!
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Read Part 2 here.
A review of books read and enjoyed in the previous year is a nod to what books can do. Broaden the imagination, help one cope with difficult circumstances with humour, provide a new lens to view an old problem and give one a sense of continuity with a distant past.
Books can also build a sense of community with other cultures and civilisations and help you see that the stranger is not so strange after all.
They can also reverse a Gramscian dictum and be about cultivating the 'optimism of the intellect'.
Here is a list of 2023, perhaps for 2024.
Seven moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
This book is a fictional coming to terms with the modern Sri Lankan history of disappearances, murder and civil war told by Maali Almeida, a young queer man who worked as a war photographer and was killed.
As a war photographer, Maali documented the atrocities perpetrated by some of the senior politicians during the 1983 killings.
After his death, as a ghost, Maali tries to find out why he was killed and seeks to intervene to prevent the killing of people who are still alive and whom he loves.
“Books can also build a sense of community with other cultures and civilisations and help you see that the stranger is not so strange after all.
