Title : Sale of Souls
Author : Vidhya Dhara
“Sale of Souls: Love in Difficult Times” by Vidhya Dhara is a fiction story that revolves around land acquistion and the poor people fighting for their rights.The story broadcasts an evil facet of today’s era where economic development plays a major role than to care about environment and the poor,helpless people.The author embodies the realities of poor villagers in this book.
As the back cover says : ‘Sale of Souls’ a remarkable love story of two village youngsters in the backdrop of the land acquisition where the gullible villagers are fighting to retain the ancestral village.Roshni an young advocate joins the poor villagers to fight the powerful lobby of industrialists and politicians.Samar a part time lecturer, trying for a peaceful solution to all the issues in the village with his approach of ‘Sustainable development’ finds himself in love.
The story is set in a remote village on the Coast of Canara, known for its beautiful environment and bio diversity, which is earmarked for the land acquistion.The story revolves around the sensitive issue of conflict of the poverty vs development vs the environment.
I found the title unique and inviting and appropriate for the story.The title and the cover design didn’t give any idea that the story would be about land acquistion.I was totally susrprised that the story is mainly focused on land acquistion and the problems occured due to that as I was considering it to be a love story.
The story accelerates slowly in the beginning and it caught my attention after initial few pages.Author’s writing fashion made me glued to it till the end.A very simple writing style has been adopted by the author.A novice reader could go through it with a great ease.
Articulation of sentence is nice and the story has been maintained in a flow. Switching of events occurs in a smooth flow.The characterization has been done well.Lucid writing style made it easy to go with the story.The theme chosen by the author is nice and is presented eloquenlty.The narration is sticked to its theme.
The main thing that acts as the hitch is, at many places narration switches from first person to third person resulting into confusion. Some printing mistakes here and there that could be avoidable.Apart from that, all other things fall in place and is maintained nicely.
All in all,the book is good to read once and is specially recommended to those readers who are keen to read about land acquisition and life of poor villagers as this book creates a good ambience of the livelihood of villagers.
Rating : 3.4/5
Reviewer : Shweta Kesari
For reviews please contact: shwetakesari165@gmail.com
Good review. I have innate love for Madhya Pradesh,particularly, Vindyanchal and Malwa. I spent 2 decades there, discovered many things first time in life. I loved landscapes of countrysides of it and traveled extensively through out M.P( including Chatisgarh). My paintings, sketches and stories have great influence of MP.
In Ujjain, i was nostalgically associated with its ancient abodes and I loved them so much that now I think I must have some link with these places of previous births.