Earlier this week I read Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger – winner of the Man Booker prize for 2008. While a lot of reviewers have high praise for the novel, particularly the “new voice” it brings, I found the book to be quite ordinary. Though a fun read it is certainly not worthy of the Booker prize  in my opinion.

For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or (more precisely) a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe.

- Unnamed heresiarch of Uqbar

or

Mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men.

- Unnamed heresiarch of Uqbar

From Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius – a do-I-even-need-to-specify-short story in Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. It has been over 8 years since I read the book – my personal copy packed in a box somewhere in Metuchen, NJ. I bought the book at Stockholm airport this week for a friend and couldn’t help reading it over my evening cuppa.

I certainly can’t gift the book to my friend now. On the bright side, I get to read Borges again. Ha!