Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9789381791196
Pages: 188
Price: 195 INR

‘From the weakness of every human being, emerges strength. From the suffering of every human being, a world of kindness will emerge.’

This book consists of twenty-five short-stories which mainly deal with feelings of despair and desolation like loneliness, heartbreak, helplessness and depression. Ranging from ‘Light Grey’ to ‘Dark Grey’ to ‘Black’ and based on the level of darkness based in the particular story, all these stories are written by Indian authors, many of whom are aspiring writers and for whom writing is a part-time job.
This compilation of short-stories begins with a foreword that is beautifully explained. It tells us how the protagonists in this book are neither heroes nor villains and that the end of every tunnel, there is light. The category ‘Light Grey’ consists of stories that are weightless on the reader’s mind and do not give him or her too much to think about, in the end. This is followed by ‘Dark Grey’ where things get more serious, but nevertheless, the reader can relate to what is happening. Incidents that come under the division ‘Black’ are stories that are on a completely different scale. I couldn’t help but feel both disgusted and jealous at the same time. Disgusted because the stories occasionally evoke a sense of repulsion within the reader with the descriptive force of events in the story and jealous because these authors had the opportunity to write about  incidents these dark. Not that I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone who is going through a similar phase.

Authors like Upneet Grover, Vivek Banerjee, Aanandita Chawla and Saksham Agrawal are amazingly talented and this is clearly evident in their crazy writing and narrative skills. These are stories about ordinary citizens like us who do bad things, sometimes not realizing that it is something bad that they did or maybe it is just too late for it to matter anymore. What this group of people has in common is the weakness that they face in the form of temptation, greed and occasionally, lust. Towards the end of the book, there are a couple of pages dedicated to the various authors that make up this engrossing book. Interesting information about them is also given there. All in all, this is a book that one could begin reading one lazy Sunday afternoon and finish before the evening tea arrives.

Rating: 7/10

More details:

The book on the web: Shades of Sin
The book on Facebook: Shades of Sin

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