by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 4, 2025 | Reviews
Aashisha traces writers’ obsession with the oldest ironist of all — the boundless, beloved, and beautiful sea. The sea is a fascinating concept, not only because water makes up three-fourths of the planet as well as the human body (thanks, fourth-grade writer...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Sep 23, 2025 | Reviews
In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro holds up a mirror to our own compromises— how much of life we trade away in the name of duty. “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I wish. To be...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Aug 19, 2025 | Reviews
Zadie Smith has called On Beauty an “homage” to E.M. Forster’s Howards End, though not in a plot-by-plot sense. Zadie Smith has used Forster’s structure as “scaffolding” – as a way to learn to write an English novel, something that made her feel like she’d...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Aug 12, 2025 | Reviews
Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is a novel about family, art, and class but mostly, it’s about the exquisite awkwardness of believing in ideas that no longer seem to work. “The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.” — On Beauty, Zadie Smith Have you ever...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Jul 29, 2025 | Essays
Trying to uncover how Maugham wove himself into his fiction, be it through The Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage or The Moon and Sixpence “The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.” — W. Somerset Maugham The primary reason I admire Somerset Maugham is because I...