#BookReview ; Jasmine Days by Benyamin

Sameera Parvin moves to an unnamed Middle Eastern city to live with her father and her relatives. She thrives in her job as a radio jockey and at home she is the darling of the family. But her happy world starts to fall apart when revolution blooms in the country. As the people's agitation gathers strength, Sameera finds herself and her family embroiled in the politics of their adopted land. She is forced to choose between family and friends, loyalty and love, life and death.

Jasmine Days is the heart-rending story of a young woman in a city where the promise of revolution turns into destruction and division.

Jasmine Days is a story of a RJ living in a Middle Eastern city on the brink of revolution to overthrow it’s monarch, it has been written by Benyamin & translated by Shahnaz Habib. The author is a novelist & short story writer, his novel Goat Days (Aadujeevitham) was a huge success that has been reprinted more than a hundred times & has sold over 2 lakh copies. It won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award & has been translated into many languages. The translator teaches writing at The New School & Bay Path University & consults for the UN.

The story revolves around a Pakistani girl Sameera Parvin who comes to an unnamed Middle Eastern city to work & live with her father who has been working there for many years. She lived at her eldest uncle’s house with other relative who helped her father as well as other relatives get jobs & settle down. The uncle was a high ranking police official & got her father a job at the police only. He also got her a job as a radio jockey. Things were going smoothly in her life & she got quite good at her job but things started to crumble as the city got engulfed in revolution. She finds herself at a crossroad as she is forced to support the monarch as an immigrant worker but in her heart she supports the protesters. As she experiences loss & violence, she is shook to the core. Get this book here to follow Sameera’s heartfelt journey to realization of sorrows of the other side,

I had heard good things about Goat Days & I was quite excited to read this book, the blurb intrigued me & I am glad that I picked this book up. I always desperately look for books which will move me to the core & this book indeed did that, the desperateness for justice & the helplessness against the oppression will hit you hard in the heart. The journey of Sameera is inspiring, there are several subplots which will either make you smile or make you think about the lives of several people living in conflicted areas. The ending is abrupt but makes sense. The cover is beautiful, the title & language used is appropriate. This is surely one of my favorite books of this year.