Karma Kola by Deepal Kaul
Pages: 95
Price: Rs. 150 INR(Kindle Edition)
ASIN: B07F8GFVT
Buy here: https://amzn.to/30FFcVc
My take on the book:
Karma Kola by author Deepak Kaul is a collection of ten short stories which were submitted by the author for the Write India campaign that was conducted in 2017–2018 by The Time of India. Each of the stories is based on a prompt provided for this campaign which has been highlighted by the author within the story, to give an idea to the reader how the storyline has been woven around a certain prompt; each of these prompts are typically an abstract sentence.
All the ten stories are disconnected from each other and vary in genre. The first story title Karma Kola is used for the entire book; however, the cover is intended to represent the abstract nature of the stories and could have been better designed to capture the reader’s imagination. The author’s brilliance and creativity can be observed in the way each prompt is converted into a completely different storyline.
The twists are also sudden and will keep the reader on edge, however the stories have an abrupt ending; wish the stories were a bit longer, as some of the stories have scope for expansion. All the stories are very short making the entire book come to less than 100 pages, which I suspect is owing to a word count limit for the original campaign. The characters in each story hence do not have much scope and are limited.
If you love short stories with a twist, then this collection will appeal to you. More than for a reader, these stories will be a good guidance for aspiring writers on how to build a storyline around an abstract idea.
My rating:
3/5.