"हैन हौ दिनमान दाइ के हो के तपाईं त, एस्सो फोन गरेसी उठाईदिए - हामी सँग एक दुई वचन बोलिदिये त हामी नि गती पर्थ्यौँ नि , के सारो हेप्या त यार हाम्लाई ।", दिप्तेशले एक्कै सासमा आफ्नो मनको आवेग पोख्छ ।
"आमामामा ! के सारो पड्केको दिपुभाइ - जस्ताको छताँ असिना बर्स्याजस्तो पो ला'गो गाँठे । कहिले फोन गर्या थ्यौ र ?", फरासिला, हँसिला दिनमान जिस्क्याउँदै थाहा पाएर नि नपाए सरी दिप्तेशलाई घोच्छन् ।
शुन्य समयको दस गाजामा उभिएर आफ्नो अस्तित्व खोज्दै छ चौतारी । खोलो तार्दाको त्यो साथि स्वार्थ पूर्ण भयो कुनै कामको छैन अब त्यो चिसो लठ्ठी बस् नयाँ परिवेश, परिबन्द, स्वादले गिजोलेको जीवनमा पुरानो एकलासे त्यो साथि किन पो चाहियो र ? अतित त पुरै पुरातनबादी न हो 'वाद'हरुको हूलमा धमिल्लिएको ऐना पुछ्दै आफ्नो अनुहारको धुलो नदेख्ने ईतिहासका छाप अमेट्य भए पनि आज हिजोका छायाँलाई आज ठानी मेट्न खोज्दै अतितको चिनोलाई तगारो मानी यता त्यता रुमल्लीरहेको,
भट्कीरहेको एउटा प्रेतात्मा हामी सबै ।
By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations. Crusoe’s world-famous novel is a complex literary confection, and it’s irresistible.
A satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English
Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous nouveau-riche family to marry a wealthy man she detests, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart.”
Tom Jones is a classic English novel that captures the spirit of its age and whose famous characters have come to represent Augustan society in all its loquacious, turbulent, comic variety.
The great pleasure of Nightmare Abbey, which was inspired byThomas Love Peacock’s friendship withShelley, lies in the delight the author takes in poking fun at the romantic movement.
Charlotte Brontë’s erotic, gothic masterpiece became the sensation of Victorian England. Its great breakthrough was its intimate dialogue with the reader.
Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as Trollope’s masterpiece.
Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of American literature.
This entertaining if contrived story of a hack writer and priest who becomes pope sheds vivid light on its eccentric author – described by DH Lawrence as a “man-demon”.
Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to this day.
A love story set against the disappearance of an explorer in the outback, Voss paved the way for a generation of Australian writers to shrug off the colonial past.
Hailed as one of the key texts of the women’s movement of the 1960s, this study of a divorced single mother’s search for personal and political identity remains a defiant, ambitious tour de force.
Sylvia Plath’s painfully graphic roman à clef, in which a woman struggles with her identity in the face of social pressure, is a key text of Anglo-American feminism.
This wickedly funny novel about a young Jewish American’s obsession with masturbation caused outrage on publication, but remains his most dazzling work.
Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.
The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience in the 20th century.
The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, game-changing Indian English novel of a young man born at the very moment of Indian independence.
Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to Bret Easton Ellis.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan, reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de force of unreliable narration.
Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost defies analysis.
In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation.
Peter Carey rounds off our list of literary milestones with a Booker prize-winning tour-de-force examining the life and times of Australia’s infamous antihero, Ned Kelly.