The first 10% of the book (that's a lot of pages) blew my mind. I started recommending it to my friends and couldn't wait to find out what happens in the unpredictable and jarring world of Anjum, a world, and its people, so intricately and authentically woven by Arundhati Roy, that I had to research if she had lived those lives. I learned and I grieved. AR not only has a strong grip over the language, but she has so much richness and beauty in her prose that I felt like I was reading a novel-length poetry.

HOWEVER

I couldn't soldier on any further when I realized that I had read for hours yet nothing was happening, story-wise. There is basically no plot, and that is fine in literary works, but the premise started to read like a non-fiction, a narration of actual political events. Again, that is fine, if I was looking for it, but I picked up this book to read a piece of fiction, to know about Anjum and her world. Not read the events I already know about. I stopped reading, but I came back to it a few days later, just because I wanted to finish the book. But sadly, I didn't find that joy again that I felt while reading the beginning of the book.

An extra star solely for The Jannat Guesthouse and what it symbolized.