The People in the Trees

I first picked this up in a bookshop in Bangalore, knowing nothing about it or the (now very famous) author.

I was unprepared for a novel that managed to evoke the lush and intense vibrancy of South Pacific Islands, the depravity of a real-life Nobel Prize winner who was accused of heinous crimes, and the heartbreak of losing someone to dementia – all at the same time.

This is an uncomfortable but unputdownable novel, and one that affected me so deeply I now have a tattoo of it; on my thumb is the symbol carved into wood to signal that… show more.

I was left disturbed and disoriented once finishing Hanya Yanagihara’s spectacular debut novel.

Stylized as a memoir written by Norton Perina, a disgraced Nobel prize-winning scientist convicted of child molestation, the book does not hold back on its bleakness and case of moral relativism.

The novel leaves you wondering what truly goes on in the mind of people we look up to in our fields.

It’s a masterclass in prose. The contents of the book are extremely dark and will stay in your mind for days after finishing it.