2020-2021 Books

June 2020 | The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding | Chosen by Shayonnita Malik

Shayonnita Malik is a multimedia professional currently based out of Mumbai. Here is her profile on Scroll.in, where she launched quite a few features since she started working with them.

But more than the professional introduction, I'd much rather speak about the following: Shayonnita writes magnificent micro-fiction on Twitter. Now, bear in mind that the guy writing this is well into OK Boomer territory, so I may have gotten the name of the genre wrong, but here is just one of many, many examples available on her Twitter page. Her work has appeared in multiple publications, and will appear in many, many more in the years to come.

And the second thing I would want to mention is that I had the privilege of teaching her six years ago - and I do not use the word privilege lightly! I taught her economics, alas, but I am happy to report that she survived the ordeal.

We've had some heavy reading to do thus far in these parts, and none of the reads can be accused of belonging to the fiction genre, and I figured it was time to try and rectify that - which is why I sent out an SOS call to Shayonnita, and she ended up picking The Lord of the Flies. That's a non-affiliate Amazon India link to the Kindle book, and it costs only a 128 rupees - well worth the price, believe me.

Look up the book - cheat if you like by reading the CliffNotes summary, or reading the Wikipedia summary, or watching a summary of the book on YouTube. But I assure you, you will be depriving yourself of an experience by not reading the book.

The usual rules apply - a 500 word summary (a little more, a little less is just fine), to be sent in by the 20th of June. And around the 25th or so, depending on Shayonnita's schedule, we'll schedule a talk with her about this book, and all things literature.

Shayonnita, thank you for making the time!