Feeling restless that I had not been to Abids on Sunday, yesterday I slipped out during the lunch hour and surfaced at a bookstore in Lakdikapul. At last I found a book by Doris Lessing. Ever since she won the Nobel Prize, I have been looking for her works and yesterday I was rewarded. I found a paperback edition of ‘The Golden Notebook’ and got it for seventy rupees. It is 666 pages long and is a doorstopper of a book.
I was surprised to note that it was a 1968 edition and there was an inscription by someone called ‘Nisha’. Later in the evening I went through Zerin Anklesaria’s article on Lessing in last month’s ‘Literary Review’. It was mentioned that ‘The Golden Notebook’ was her best-known book. So, the book I got was a classic and I was once again glad my instincts hadn’t failed me in the choice of the book. There were two other books of Lessing but they were parts of some series so I didn’t pick them up though they were shorter.
I also found a 1946 issue of Avon- Modern Short Story Monthly containing Somerset Maugham’s short stories. The book had the title of ‘The Trembling of a Leaf’, and inside there was a stamp of ‘Olympic Bookstore, Rangoon’. The book was almost sixty years old and was intact except that the pages have become faded. I got this book for sixty rupees.
I hope to finish reading ‘The Golden Notebook’ before the next year’s Nobel Prize winner is announced.
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