Why do we read stories?

Sailen Routray

I got a copy of Jonathan Stroud's 'The Golem's Eye' from a stall at the recently concluded Kalinga Book Fair in Bhubaneswar. The bookseller was a gentleman from Calcutta. He was quite voluble, which was a distraction.

His shop focused mainly on the British literary canon with some nods to children's literature. 'The Golem's Eye' (TGE) was one such nod. He wanted hundred rupees for the book. It was a battered copy, so I offered him fifty. But he declined. Since I was in no mood to bargain, I paid the hundred and bagged the volume.

I had read the 'The Amulet of Samarkand' of the Bartimaeus trilogy, of which TGE is a part, many autumns back. The book had grabbed me like very few books ever have. It was written primarily from the perspective and voice of Bartimaeus, a djinn of hoary historical antecedents. Bartimaeus was funny, he was ironical, and he offered a keen outsider's perspective on what it means to be human.

The Bartimaeus trilogy is a fantasy series set in a contemporaneous England in which a parallel set of historical processes take place. In this universe, the driving force of history is not ideology, or science or technological change for that matter, but the relationship human beings have with magic.

And magic in that world is mainly about controlling many different types of 'otherworldly' sentient beings, such as the djinn Bartimaeus, and compelling them through spell-induced forces to do the magicians' bidding.

The magicians in London, for all practical purposes, comprise a brutal aristocracy that rules over common folk who do not have any magical talent. The only things that prevent this exercise of power from becoming completely totalitarian are the mistakes that the magicians themselves make, and a small band of people - The Resistance - who oppose the magician's rule through violent acts against property, especially magical property.

Kitty, a young adolescent, is a key member of this resistance. We see her actions from up close through the third person narrative and through the eyes of Bartimaeus, the djinn. The Resistance's biggest enemy is another adolescent - the ambitious young magician John Mandrake. The narrative revolves around a major attack by the Resistance and what happens in its aftermath.

The action in the novel is rollicking, the plot fast paced, the details (the novel's 570 pages allow of a lot of detailing) apt and vivid. But this is not why on two nights I stayed awake till almost two to finish the novel in a working week.

I stayed up because I wanted to hear Bartimaeus's voice, I wanted to see how a djinn perceives us humans, and to know how he makes sense of us - to get a feel, of 'the mind of the other'.

This is what all good fiction does perhaps? It opens up our worlds a bit, and makes us aware of, and gives us a feel for, strangers who are likes us, and for people like us who are, ultimately, strangers.

Details About the Book: Jonathan Stroud. 2005. The Golem's Eye [The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Book II]. London: Corgi Books.