While the plot of a fox who has a knack for stealing chickens but is forced to retire from a life of crime in order to enter fatherhood is simple enough, the story is really about how a character like Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) grows tired of fighting his natural instincts. He attempts to get back to his old career of thievery unbeknown to his wife, Mrs. Fox (voiced by Meryl Streep) only to face off with three farmers who spend the rest of the film trying to kill him. Similar to most of Anderson’s movie, the protagonist is a flawed character in search of that blaze of glory – always scheming, always falling apart, always coming back at the last minute for a moment of redemption after coming to terms with their true nature. “I’m a wild animal,” Mr. Fox admits in a scene of honesty with his wife. But beneath the dominating layer of that single character are others who are struggling to come to the forefront, such as Mr. Fox’s son, Ash (voiced by Jason Shwartzman) who tries everything to live up to the high bar his father has set just by being his naturally talented self. Ash is of course ignored and passed off as being “different”, but nevertheless sets off to prove himself and find his proper place in things before the story ends. The film is steeped with the undertones of a dysfunctional family trying to stick together during a crisis meant to tear them apart.

The animation is incredibly simple and enjoyable. Like most of Anderson’s movies, the characters seem to always be dressed in 1970’s style corduroys, and keep to a certain aesthetic. It is probably not a film intended for children, but rather one that plays straight to the heart’s content of much older audiences, particularly those familiar with Anderson’s work and perhaps waiting to see if he is able to break away from his traditional formulaic film making and create something new. Surprisingly, he manages to accomplish the latter while keeping true to the former.

I really appreciated the tightness and lucidity of the story – especially because it would have been a cinch to let the material run away with itself (Gaiman was writing on very fertile ground). I loved Coraline’s creepiness – as an adult, I was never scared, but I would have been as a kid, and I have to admit to a certain amount of edginess every now and then, even as an adult. But the thing I loved most about Coraline was Coraline herself. She’s a wonderful, modern, no-fuss girl, very intelligent and very bored. And she’s no easy mark for the evil that intrudes upon her world. Unlike her counterpart in the film adaptation (which was nowhere near as good as the book), the literary Coraline is never seduced by the “other” world, as most children would be. She is wise and brave in the face of frightening things, she wins through cleverness twice, and in a lovely, subtle stroke at the end, she learns not to be bored in the mundane world

Arundhati Roy, who is born to a Keralite Syrian mother and a Bengali Hindu father, has her partly autobiographical novel The God of Small Things centering on the very themes that she grew up witnessing as a child – there are the Syrian Christian ideals, there’s the Indian caste system, there’s the democracy rule verses communalism, and there are the western and eastern ethics in clash – all in function within the vicinity of a classical Keralite family. But Roy, instead of making a big statement by drawing on the aforementioned themes, offers us a close and intimate look at her personal story. And she does so in sheer loveliness and honor.

Shri Benaan John Ipe and Shoshamma Ipe (Pappachi and Mammachi respectively) are the parents of Ammu and Chacko. Without ample dowry for a marriage proposal, Ammu becomes desperate to find his man. Finally, she convinces her parents to let her spend a summer with an aunt in Calcutta. Ammu got married, divorced and finally returns to Ayemenem after giving birth to two children, dizygotic twins Estha-Esthappen and Rahel. They now live with Mammachi, their blind grandmother, Chacko, the Oxford scholar who returns to India after separating from his wife, Margaret Kochamma and daughter, Sophie Mol (Mol means girl), and Baby Kochamma, the old yet fresh-and-in-love grandaunt who still muses over Father Mulligan (the young Irish priest she met as a young girl).

Margaret and Sophie were about to spend Christmas in Ayemenem. On the way to the airport to pick them up, they encounter a group of communist protesters. The protesters surround the family car and force Baby Kochamma to wave a red flag and chant a communist slogan. She is humiliated and begins to grudge towards Velutha (a man from the factory with extremely gifted hands, an accomplished carpenter and mechanic.), who Rahel claims to have seen in the crowd, though he didn’t do anything against her. After this, the family visits a theater playing “The Sound of Music”, where Estha is sexually abused by the “Orangedrink Lemondrink man” (the food vendor).

The day of Margaret and Sophie’s arrival, Ammu and Velutha, who is an untouchable (the lowest caste) and a paravan, realize that they are attracted to one another but when their intimate relationship had been discovered, Velutha was banished and Ammu blames the twins for everything and screams at them to go away. Rahel and Estha decide to run away, and Sophie persuaded them to take her with them. While trying to reach an abandoned house across the river, their boat capsizes and Sophie drowns. The twins search all night for Sophie, but cannot find her. Wearily, they fall asleep at the abandoned house. They are unaware that Velutha is there as well, for it is where he secretly meets with Ammu.

When Sophie’s body is discovered, Baby Kochamma goes to the police and accuses Velutha of being responsible for Sophie’s death. She claims that Velutha attempted to rape Ammu, threatened the family, and kidnapped the children. A group of policemen hunts Velutha down and savagely beats him for crossing caste lines. The twins witness this terrible scene, and are deeply affected for they know the truth. Baby Kochamma forced Rahel and Estha into believing that unless they accuse Velutha of Sophie’s death, they and Ammu will all be sent to jail. Frightened and confused, the children testify against Velutha. Velutha dies from his injuries. However, the love of Ammu for Velutha is unconditional. She comes to the station to tell the truth about their relationship. Afraid of being exposed, Baby Kochamma convinces Chacko that Ammu and the twins are responsible for his daughter’s death. Chacko drives Ammu and the twins away. Ammu, unable to find a job, is forced to send Estha to live with his father. Estha never sees Ammu again, as she dies alone and impoverished a few years later.

Rahel, when grown up, leaves for the US, gets married, divorced and finally returns to Ayemenem after several years working as a waitress in an Indian restaurant and as a night clerk at a gas station. Rahel and Estha, both 31 at this time, are reunited for the first time since they were 7 years old. Both Estha and Rahel have been damaged by their past, and by this time Estha has become perpetually silent because of his traumatic childhood. The twins stay together for most of a day, and that night commit incest with one another.

This magnificent book gave me a thrill to know the cause of Estha’s silence. I like the style of the author, the way the author wrote it. Usually, authors write stories from the beginning to the end or from the cause then the effect but Arundhati Roy wrote it vice versa. He started it by stating the current situation and gradually present the past of each characters leading you to the climax of the story and appreciate the characters more. Remarkable and extra-ordinary technique was used. Without a doubt, Roy has an exceptional talent.

It has its twists and turns. Political and moral issues were discussed. Real problems of an Indian National in their everyday life were tackled. Reality was uncovered. Some historical facts were also presented, like the death of Julius Caesar by the hands of his friend, Brutus, in the Senate and how he fell to the floor with knives in his back and said, “Et tu, Brute?–then fall, Caesar.” Simplicity was employed but deeper meaning lies behind the text. Figures of speech were brought in. Symbolisms were used. One example is the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man which represents pedophile.

The book revolves on the story of the two egg twins who thought of themselves together as “ME” and separately as “WE”, the children with back-reading habits. Truly, small things can change the course of one’s life. Circumstances that the characters especially Rahel and Estha faced, undeniably, affected their lives as well as their behavior. Decisions that the characters have made is a matter of great importance. Your future depends on what you are doing and fighting for right now. Prejudice took over in the life of some characters that cause them to turn upside down.

This book is, indeed, astonishing. It is one of a kind and a must read. Indisputably, you shouldn’t miss this book. Grab a copy at your nearest bookstore and start reading. This book will surely open your eyes from naked truth. Learn more about the chauvinism of the caste system in India, how the untouchables were treated by the upper caste and how they live their life together with the touchables. Discover how little things, unnoticed, overlooked and taken for granted, can mold you, for better of for worse.

• the medieval life, especially the medical response to the Plague
• gleaning scientific knowledge from nature without modern tools, measurements, standardization or reference books
• the relationship between a scientist, the Catholic church, and the Bible, compared to today
• the struggle of an intellectual pioneer burdened with ideas before their time (some of his discoveries weren’t confirmed until the 20th Century!)
• a productive person who had every excuse in the world to not be productive.

Take a deep breath and read Galileo’s words written around 1615: “And to prohibit the whole science would be but to censure a hundred passages of Holy Scripture which teach us that the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvelously discerned in all His works and divinely read in the open book of Heaven. For let no one believe that reading the lofty concepts written in that book leads to nothing further than the mere seeing of the splendor of the Sun and the stars and their rising and setting, which is as far as the eyes of the brutes and of the vulgar can penetrate. Within its pages are couched mysteries so profound and concepts so sublime that the vigils, labors, and studies of hundreds upon hundreds of the most acute minds have still not pierced them, even after continual investigations for thousands of years.”

Judul Asli: The Great Theft; Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
Dalam buku ini, el Fadl memaparkan bahwa dalam dunia Islam secara umum saat ini terbelah pada 2 kelompok: muslim moderat dan muslim puritan. Dua kelompok Islam ini masing-masing berebut klaim dan menyatakan bahwa Islam mereka adalah Islam yang benar. Islam moderat adalah mayoritas dalam dunia Islam sedangkan Islam puritan adalah minoritas. Namun minoritas inilah yang selama ini berteriak lantang dan menguasai media massa dan telah berhasil membentuk suatu opini tertentu mengenai ‘apa itu Islam’ khususnya pada masyarakat non-muslim.

Muslim Puritan bukanlah Muslim yang berwatak radikal, fanatik, maupun ekstrem namun lebih mengacu pada gaya pemikiran yang menganut absolutisme, kaku, dan selalu menuntut adanya kejelasan dalam menafsirkan suatu teks. Namun watak yang fanatik dan ekstrem merupakan bagian ciri dari kelompok ini.

Dua persoalan utama yang membedakan kaum Puritan dengan Umat Islam lainnya terangkum dalam dua pertanyaan:

(1) apakah teks-teks agama ditujukan untuk mengatur banyak aspek kehidupan dan,

(2) apakah estetika manusia untuk berfikir secara cermat dan mengetahui ‘sesuatu yang baik’ itu dimungkinkan.

Menurut kaum Puritan, bukan Cuma teks benar-benar mengatur banyak aspek kehidupan manusia, melainkan juga bahwa Sang Penulis teks menentukan makna teks, sementara tugas pembaca dalam bergelut dengan teks itu cukuplah sekedar memahami dan mengimplementasikannya seakan-akan makna teks senantiasa jelas dan gamblang.

Dalam paradigma Puritan, subjektifitas manusia yang menafsirkan tidaklah relevan terhadap realisasi dan implementasi perintah Tuhan, yang seutuhnya dan secara menyeluruh sudah termaktub dalam teks. Karena itulah estetika dan wawasan moral atau pengalaman manusia yang menafsir dinilai tidak relevan dan tidak berguna.

Dalam memandang persoalan-persoalan sosial-politik, kaum Puritan nyaris mendekati ciri orang yang menderita skizofrenia. Kaum Puritan menafikan analisis filsafat, teori politik, moralitas dan keindahan karena dipandang terlalu subjektif. Dengan mayoritas ahli-ahli ilmu alam dan teknik, berpijak pada objektifitas dan kepastian yang berasal dari empirisme, mereka mengklaim nilai-nilai moral dan etis serta penilaian estetika mengenai apa yang perlu dan apa yang mendesak tidak dapat dikuantifikasi dan diukur sehingga tidak dapat dijadikan opsi dalam pembuatan keputusan hukum Islam. Karena pertimbangan estetika di enyahkan dan humanisme dilupakan (karena produk barat yang busuk), kaum Puritan memahami warisan humanistik peradaban islam sebagai sesuatu yang tidak bernilai penting. Kaum Puritan mengabaikan fakta bahwa jauh sebelum ada pengaruh barat, orang muslim telah menulis berjilid-jilid buku tentang puisi, cinta, serta tata prilaku dan kesopanan.

Dalam hubungan dengan Tuhan, kaum puritan memiliki pola hubungan yang sederhana: manusia diciptakan untuk tunduk kepada Tuhan melalui ibadah. Praktik ritual adalah bukti kesetiaan kepada Tuhan. Dalam konsepsi kaum moderat, Tuhan memiliki moral dan penilaian yang bersumber dari kasih dan sayang. Manusia tercipta dan diamanatkan untuk memberadabkan Bumi. Memberadabkan bumi bukan berarti membangun gedung dan jalan raya, namun menyebarkan nilai-nilai keTuhanan di atas muka bumi ini: menyebarkan kebaikan dan mencegah keburukan dan kerusakan. Kaum Moderat percaya Tuhan mencintai manusia dan manusia mencintai Tuhan dengan rasa syukur, sementara bagi kaum Puritan, manusia tidak butuh mencintai Tuhan, manusia hanya harus patuh kepada Tuhan.

Selama 388 halaman (termasuk indeks), el Fadl bukan hanya membahas perbedaan kaum Puritan dan moderat namun juga beberapa pandangan baik mengenai akidah, yusiprudensi, dan sikap dalam memahami suatu permasalahan. El Fadl juga membahas sejarah berdirinya 2 kelompok Islam Puritan yaitu Wahabisme dan Salafy serta sepak terjangnya dalam dunia saat ini. Juga ada pembahasan singkat mengenai beberapa isu-isu kotemporer seperti demokrasi, hak azasi manusia, terorisme, dan pemberdayaan perempuan.

Pada akhirnya, seperti yang tertulis pada sampul belakangnya, buku ini menyeru mayoritas-diam untuk mengakhiri kebungkaman. Tradisi moral Islam telah dicuri dan dihancurkan oleh minoritas-bersuara-lantang. Muslim Moderat harus melindungi Islam dari misintrepertasi dan disinformasi kaum Puritan. Jika kaum Puritan berbicara lantang disertai dengan kekerasan, maka kaum moderat harus berbicara dengan lebih lantang diiringi dengan tindakan damai. Islam dan umat Islam harus menjadi sarana perwujudan rahmat dan kasih sayang Tuhan bagi semua umat manusia.

I picked this little book up because I loved the Harry Potter series and I was excited to dive into more magical stories. I have to be honest that I was a little disappointed in this book, mostly because of its length. It is a quick read–will only take an hour or so–and in the end I wanted more. I would have been thrilled if the book contained a few more stories, but maybe/hopefully there will be more in the future. I enjoyed the stories, but everything people have said about Dumbledore’s commentary is true–it really does add a lot of depth to the stories and really made this collection fun. Dumbledore’s commentary is also humorous and I found myself chuckling aloud at statements such as, “A simple and heartwarming fable, one might think – in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop” (11).

I think this book would be great to read to younger audiences and I will hold on to it for when I have kiddos of my own. The stories, while not always ending in “happily ever after,” do have a magical and fairy tale feel to them but they stay true to the feel of the Harry Potter books in keeping with the wizarding themes. The tales teach us lessons about being kind to others, lessons about not succumbing to foolishness, and lessons of finding happiness from within. In the end, though, I felt like Rowling teased her readers with hopes of more Harry Potter. I’d recommend this book with a little bit of reservation. Probably not for those who haven’t fallen in love with the Harry Potter series, and for those who have,just keep in mind that this is a short little book that will probably leave you wanting more.

Pather Panchali (the translated version called “ Song of the Road”) was written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. It was his first novel and was published in 2nd October 1929. His father died when he was very young. Few years later, the death of his mother and his first wife and its sympathy worked as an inspiration for him. He started writing a novel about his own childhood days. This novel was none other than the highly acclaimed “Pather Panchali”.
“Pather Panchali” has withstood the test of time. The characters in the story show the author’s ability of understanding the complex minds of humans and portraying those real-life chracters in paper. These characters become an unforgettable part of our own lives. “Pather Panchali”’s Apu, Durga, Harihar, Sharbajaya and Indir Thhakuran, in the same way, get into our minds and become a part of us, knowingly or unknowingly.
This novel is also much admired because of its simplicity in language and the vivid descriptions of the countryside. Village life and nature is an attraction for the writer. He has loved his village like anything else.He has drawn with ink— flowers, trees, fruits, plants, green fields with great care in his book. And the pictures—one after another has composed a song—“Song of the Road”.
Joy, woe, laughter, sadness all form a part of this song. Some realistic pictures of the society are also contained in this book. “Pather Panchali” is written wholly from the opinion of children. Durga narrates the first part of the story and later part is done by Apu. It mainly tells the story of the young boy Apu, who grows up in his little village—Nishchindipur.
It is a story, which goes deep inside our heart and leaves its wounds in our minds. The author narrates a heart-warming tale about growing up in a village. The story goes on swiftly and the author has adapted a very simple style of writing. This story might have been written long ago but this novel will remain an evergreen classic!

I finally finished reading Karen Armstrong’s A History of God last weekend. This book is the history and development of the three great monotheistic religions of the West, the story of how a tribal god of the desert became the One True God. It is a powerful book that should be read by everyone who lives in a country where Judaism, Christianity, or Islam is a dominant or secondary religion. Which is to say, everyone should read it.

While I found the facts presented in the book to be interesting, overall I was struck with two major impressions.

The first is that I should have been taught this many years ago. There is little if any original research in A History of God – while some notable discoveries have been made in the last 10-20 years (most notably the translation of the Gnostic gospels), most of what Armstrong presents has been known for decades if not centuries. So why isn’t it being taught in Sunday Schools?

There are two answers – one I consider valid and one I don’t. The valid reason is that most people don’t go to Sunday School and church to learn about the history of religion. They go to feed their souls, to participate in their blessed communities, and to learn how to more fully embody their faith. The other reason is that preachers and teachers are afraid they’ll lose their jobs if they present anything that challenges the literal truth of their religious myths. A History of God does a wonderful job of explaining why religions turn to literal beliefs, how it’s happened, and why it represents an immature faith in any religion.

The second major impression I got from this book is that theology and mysticism are inherently incompatible. Either you study and speculate about the nature of God / Goddess / Ultimate Reality, or you experience God / Goddess / Ultimate Reality first-hand. But you can’t do both – or at least, you can’t do both very well. The two activities require two very different approaches and skill sets. Theology is a left-brain activity, mysticism is a right-brain activity. Theology uses logic, mysticism uses intuition.

But history shows that theology leads to doctrines and dogmas – it leads to separation and division, frequently over the most absurd, unprovable details. Mystics, though, have experiences that are remarkably similar across religions and cultures – mysticism leads toward universalism. Armstrong says “Unlike dogmatic religion, which lends itself to sectarian disputes, mysticism often claims that there are as many roads to God as people.”

One of the reasons why I started this blog was to develop and articulate a modern Pagan theology. I think I need to re-evaluate that goal. Armstrong quotes Louis Massignon, a French scholar of Islam, who said:

“The mystic call is as a rule the result of an inner rebellion of the conscience against social injustices, not only those of others but primarily and particularly against one’s own faults with a desire intensified by inner purification to find God at any price.”

To find the Goddess at any price. The question – for me, and for all who take their religion seriously – is whether we are willing to pay that price.

In 632, after five years of fearful warfare, the city of Mecca in the Arabian Hijaz voluntarily opened its gates to the Muslim army. No blood was shed and nobody was forced to convert to Islam, but the Prophet Muhammad ordered the destruction of all idols and icons of the Divine. There were a number of frescoes painted on the inner walls of the Kabah, the ancient granite shrine in the centre of Mecca, and one of them, it is said, depicted Mary and the infant Jesus. Immediately Muhammad covered it reverently with his cloak, ordering all the other pictures to be destroyed except that one.

This story may surprise people in the west, who have regarded Islam as the implacable enemy of Christianity ever since the crusades, but it is salutary to recall it during the Christmas season when we are surrounded by similar images of the Virgin and Child. It reminds us that the so-called clash of civilisations was by no means inevitable. For centuries Muslims cherished the figure of Jesus, who is honoured in the Qur’an as one of the greatest of the prophets and, in the formative years of Islam, became a constituent part of the emergent Muslim identity.

There are important lessons here for both Christians and Muslims – especially, perhaps, at Christmas. The Qur’an does not believe that Jesus is divine but it devotes more space to the story of his virginal conception and birth than does the New Testament, presenting it as richly symbolic of the birth of the Spirit in all human beings (Qur’an 19:17-29; 21:91). Like the great prophets, Mary receives this Spirit and bears Jesus, who will, in his turn, become an ayah, a revelation of peace, gentleness and compassion to the world.

The Qur’an is horrified by Christian claims that Jesus was the “son of God”, and depicts Jesus ardently denying his divinity in an attempt to “cleanse” himself of these blasphemous projections. Time and again the Qur’an insists that, like Muhammad himself, Jesus was a perfectly ordinary human being and that the Christians have entirely misunderstood their own scriptures. But it concedes that the most learned and faithful Christians – especially monks and priests – did not believe that Jesus was divine; of all God’s worshippers, they were closest to the Muslims (5:85-86).

It has to be said that some Christians have a very simplistic understanding of what is meant by the incarnation. When the New Testament writers – Paul, Matthew, Mark and Luke – call Jesus the “Son of God”, they do not mean that he was God. They use the term in its Jewish sense: in the Hebrew Bible, this title was bestowed upon an ordinary mortal – a king, a priest or a prophet – who had been given a special task by God and enjoyed unusual intimacy with him. Throughout his gospel, Luke is in tune with the Qur’an, because he consistently calls Jesus a prophet. Even John, who saw Jesus as God’s incarnate Word, usually made a distinction, albeit a very fine one, between the eternal Word and God himself – just as our own words are separate from the essence of our being.

The Qur’an insists that all rightly guided religions come from God, and Muslims are required to believe in the revelations of every single one of God’s messengers: “Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob … and all the other prophets: we make no distinction between any of them” (3:84). But Jesus – also called the Messiah, the Word and the Spirit – had special status.

Jesus, it was felt, had an affinity with Muhammad, and had predicted his coming (61:6), just as the Hebrew prophets were believed by Christians to have foretold the coming of Christ. The Qur’an, possibly influenced by Docetic Christianity, denied that Jesus had been crucified, but saw his ascension into heaven as the triumphant affirmation of his prophethood. In a similar way, Muhammad had once mystically ascended to the Throne of God. Jesus would also play a prominent role beside Muhammad in the eschatological drama of the last days.

During the first three centuries of Islam, Muslims came into close contact with Christians in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and began to amass a collection of hundreds of stories and sayings attributed to Jesus; there is nothing comparable in any other non-Christian religion. Some of these teachings were clearly derived from the gospel – the Sermon on the Mount was particularly popular – but were given a distinctively Muslim flavour. Jesus is depicted making the hajj, reading the Qur’an, and prostrating himself in prayer.

In other stories, Jesus articulated specifically Muslim concerns. He was a great model for Muslim ascetics, preaching poverty, humility and patience. Sometimes he took sides in a political or theological dispute: aligning himself with those who advocated free will in the debate about predestination; praising Muslims who retired on principle from politics (”Just as kings have left wisdom to you, so you should leave the world to them”); or condemning scholars who prostituted their learning for political advancement (”Do not make your living from the Book of God”).

Jesus was becoming internalised by Muslims as an exemplar and inspiration in their own spiritual quest. Shias felt that there was a strong connection between Jesus and their inspired imams, who had also had miraculous births and inherited prophetic knowledge from their mothers. The Sufis were especially devoted to Jesus and called him the prophet of love. The 12th-century mystic Ibn al-Arabi called him “the seal of the saints” – deliberately pairing him with Muhammad, the “seal of the prophets”. Some Sufis went so far as to alter the shahadah, the Muslim profession of faith, so that it became: “I bear witness that there is no God but Allah, and that Jesus [not Muhammad] is his prophet.”

The Muslim devotion to Jesus is a remarkable example of the way in which one tradition can be enriched by another. It cannot be said that Christians returned the compliment. While the Muslims were amassing their Jesus-traditions, Christian scholars in Europe were denouncing Muhammad as a lecher and charlatan, viciously addicted to violence. But today both Muslims and Christians are guilty of this kind of bigotry and often seem eager to see only the worst in each other.

The Muslim devotion to Jesus shows that this was not always the case. In the past, before the political dislocations of modernity, Muslims were always able to engage in fruitful and stringent self-criticism. This year, on the birthday of the Prophet Jesus, they might ask themselves how they can revive their long tradition of pluralism and appreciation of other religions. For their part, meditating on the affinity that Muslims once felt for their faith, Christians might look into their own past and consider what they might have done to forfeit this respect.

· Karen Armstrong is the author of Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time.

Edited by Pierre Haski, the man who was entrusted with the diaries by the girl’s mother just as he was about to leave the village, the book consists mainly of the entries in her diary from 2 September 2000 to 13 December 2001 (with a portion between 29 December 2000 to 2 July gone because her father had torn pages from it to roll his cigarettes).

Her entries reveal the remote and harsh terrain in which the villagers from Zhangjiashu, in the south of Ningxia (northwest of Beijing), lacking in basic amenities such as water, live. The theme which runs through her diary is Ma Yan, aged 13, is her strong determination and desire to remain in school so that she can lift her family from the vicious cycle of poverty. Sometimes going without food (and a meal for them is just plain rice – meat is a scarcity), children like Ma Yan have to endure the hunger when money is hard to come by. For us, who come from an affluent society, the hardships and abject poverty which the villagers face is astounding and beyond imagination.

But good has come out of it – Ma Yan’s diaries were published and much publicity about the educational needs of the children in her village has been done. Pierre Haski concludes the book with a series of articles in the Appendices which updates and enlightens the readers on various issues such as “The Plight of Education” which discusses the problems faced in educating the children of peasants and “How Things Have Changed” which focuses on the results of the publicity on both Ma Yan and her peers – more children receiving grants to remain in school.

While her writing is not as entertaining as Anne Frank’s diary and that should not be the point, it reminds us to cherish what we have and to work hard towards our goals, no matter how adverse the circumstances are.