Review: Memories of Fire by Ashok Chopra

Memories of Fire by Ashok Chopra
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Memories of fire is a book about five friends in the 1950s who grow up witnessing or being affected by the political and economic changes in India and Pakistan. They meet not so frequently but have lot of letter exchanges and two of them are in habit of keeping a journal, through which we are told a major part of the story.

I have mixed feelings for this book. I think this book is more of a personal recollection of events and places mixed with a fictional story that is not linear at all. Even in flashbacks , there is not a clear flow. There are letters and paragraph that read like a wikipedia posts , so dry and to the point. While you may enjoy those nuggets at times as per your interest, area,  it takes away attention from the story. Some places I did not want to go back to the fictional part of the book at all , so good was the setting and details of the real events. I really could not add up the two in many chapters. The book appears to be inspired from true people and events from the author's life but the fictionalization is a little too sketchy.

It makes an okay read for people who do not like historical fiction at all.

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