And We Remained
by
Asad Ali Junaid
The Blurb
It is Bangalore in the late 1990’s. There are tremendous socio-economic and cultural transformations taking place as a result of liberalization. How would these changes impact a group of friends in their late teens? How would they cope, find opportunities and what of their original identities would they be left with, after western ideologies are brought in and bombarded into their awareness by cable TV and new media?
Told through emails and first person account of events, And We Remained is a light and entertaining read of these friends as they experience love, heartbreak, prison, politics, drunken binges, strip clubs, sexcapades, US and Europe during their journey into adulthood
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MY REVIEW:
‘And We Remained’ is yet another book on the life of a few college students. The good part though, is that it’s not yet another book on the life of a few college students. Confused? Let me clarify it for you.
The style of narration is what makes this book different, from anything that you might have read in the past. It’s interesting, gripping, and yes, different. It’s about five friends, coming from different backgrounds, and how they spend the four years in the Engineering College, the fun they had, the hardships they had to go through, the challenges they faced, and how they excelled through it all. The romance dose is in the form of a quadrangle, when three of them fall in love with the same girl. The book has got almost all the ingredients of Love, heartbreak, prison, politics, drunken binges, strip clubs etc. in just about enough quantity.
What I liked most about the book is that the language is true and genuine, exactly how college students speak. The author has taken care, not to infuse too much of drama, which might have ended up making it read like, well, yet another book on college students.
What I liked the least though, is the much too frequent shifting of Point Of Views. It was confusing at times, to put it mildly. Editing and Proofreading could have been better too; but that is understandable when the author himself decides to play all the roles, from the writer to designer to publisher.
Overall, it a fun, light read, which will make you nostalgic for your own days during college. Worth a read, this one!
Meet the Author
Asad Ali Junaid is a design professional in Bangalore working in the area of Human-Machine Interaction. He aims to resolve problems to enable humans interact and use technology efficiently.
Junaid writes whenever there is a compelling story inside him bursting to get out. Junaid’s first fiction novel –And We Remained – started as a story which needed to be told… and one which needed to be told differently. He joined a three week in residence ‘Just Write’ fiction writing workshop where he got a chance to learn the nuances of and hone his story telling skills from authors Anil Menon, Anjum Hasan and Rimi Chatterjee. And We Remained then turned into a 52,000 word novel with an absorbing storyline and a unique narration style – the story is set in the 1990’s India and is told through emails and first person accounts of events. Junaid is getting great feedback for the story depicting the mindset of engineering students in that era and the unique narration style it follows.
Junaid is married and his wife is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore working in the area of Molecular Biophysics. Their toddler completes their home while keeping them on their toes.
Junaid writes whenever there is a compelling story inside him bursting to get out. Junaid’s first fiction novel –And We Remained – started as a story which needed to be told… and one which needed to be told differently. He joined a three week in residence ‘Just Write’ fiction writing workshop where he got a chance to learn the nuances of and hone his story telling skills from authors Anil Menon, Anjum Hasan and Rimi Chatterjee. And We Remained then turned into a 52,000 word novel with an absorbing storyline and a unique narration style – the story is set in the 1990’s India and is told through emails and first person accounts of events. Junaid is getting great feedback for the story depicting the mindset of engineering students in that era and the unique narration style it follows.
Junaid is married and his wife is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore working in the area of Molecular Biophysics. Their toddler completes their home while keeping them on their toes.
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