Writing = empathy

Great books are filters, distilling from the everyday simple truths about our condition. They station themselves in the lives of their characters, and are content simply to observe; guileless, incapable of judgment, and completely unselfconscious, they invest in each of their characters a degree of empathy unqualified by the trammels of diurnal social discourse.

'A House for Mr. Biswas' is such a book. Set in the poverty stricken backdrop of rural Trinidad in the mid-twentieth century, the novel explores themes of longing and alienation while taking us through the life of the eponymous Mohun Biswas. The book deals with its subject matter compassionately but without degenerating, as lesser books usually do, into the sort of cloying sentimentality that makes one want to stop reading. It is also very well written -- the prose is subtle and graceful, and achieves powerful imagery through understatement.

As I read 'Biswas', I saw my own role changing as the pages sped by. From being more or less an interested observer, I was transformed first into a person who sympathized deeply, and then, inexorably, into one who felt as the characters, who felt with them. Identifying with the protagonist of a storyline is one thing -- the stuff of most hero-villain yarns -- but, as you might discover if you read this book, identifying with every single character can quickly turn into an almost sacred exercise in catharsis.