"Corbett's adventures are an interesting read. However, I picked up this book for a different reason. His writings reflect the English view of what were called the days of the Raj, which is what I wanted to read. Corbett's views reflect a typical Britisher's viewpoint of India as it was back in the days of the Raj. He is prejudicial, opinionated, humble in an odd perverse manner where he at one hand maintains his British superiority and on another hand loves his rural India. On one hand, he agrees with Katherine Mayo and on other also favors Gandhi. On one hand, finds Brahmins to be the purest blood present on the land and on other finds the caste divisions ignorant. He cannot be called a man harbouring various contradictions because these contradictions come naturally with a superior British behaviour which is both at the same time condescending and nationalistic in an odd way.

The book has several stories, interesting, funny, revealing and some with beautiful climaxes. Narration is fine and I enjoyed reading the book. A thin and very quick read. I think, a better picture of the days of the Raj can be seen while reading Corbett, Kipling and Forster together."

"More like A Hundred Years of Torture. I read this partly in a misguided attempt to expand my literary horizons and partly because my uncle was a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then again, he also used to re-read Ulysses for fun, which just goes to show that you should never take book advice from someone whose IQ is more than 30 points higher than your own.

I have patience for a lot of excesses, like verbiage and chocolate, but not for 5000 pages featuring three generations of people with the same names. I finally tore out the family tree at the beginning of the book and used it as a bookmark! To be fair, the book isn’t actually 5000 pages, but also to be fair, the endlessly interwoven stories of bizarre exploits and fantastical phenomena make it seem like it is. The whole time I read it I thought, “This must be what it’s like to be stoned.� Well, actually most of the time I was just trying to keep the characters straight. The rest of the time I was wondering if I was the victim of odorless paint fumes. However, I think I was simply the victim of Marquez’s brand of magical realism, which I can take in short stories but find a bit much to swallow in a long novel. Again, to be fair, this novel is lauded and loved by many, and I can sort of see why. A shimmering panoramic of a village’s history would appeal to those who enjoy tragicomedy laced heavily with fantasy. It’s just way too heavily laced for me.
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