Water for Elephants

Author: Sara Gruen

Genre: Fiction

Film tie-ins are convenient. If I know who the actors and actresses are, I immediately imagine them playing the same characters in the movie - despite the fact that I have never seen the film myself. This usually sets me up for a potential disappointment when I DO get to see the film, as some scenes are not played the way I saw it in my mind, and some lines are inevitably changed.

However, reading this book disappointed me in a different way. If I were in Reese Witherspoon's shoes, I would feel insulted at being offered to play Marlena from this novel. Imagine - an Oscar-winning actress who has played such diverse roles since her teenhood reduced to playing a one-dimensional part (but hang on, didn't she do the same for 'This Means War'?).

Marlena is a circus performer caught in a love triangle between the circus' seasoned animal trainer and the new circus 'vet'. That's about all there is to her, as the story is told from the vet's POV.

It is set in the 20's or 30's, and is told in flashback by the vet who is now languishing in an old folk's home. The circus is a travelling circus, criss-crossing America on a train to perform shows or acquire new acts from bankrupt competitors. One of their acquisitions is an elephant that the circus owner insists on being made the star attraction, despite not being able to follow instructions.

The premise is interesting, and the novel started off quite well, but halfway through the pace dropped and things began to get quite humdrum. It was only in the last few chapters that the action picked up again, but even then it became a tad too predictable.

The Old Man & The Sea

Author: Ernest Hemingway
Genre: Fiction, Classic

This book was lying around in the house - it belongs to Hubby. He seems to have a collection of classics about men, fishing and the sea - before we were married he was reading Moby Dick but never got round to finishing it. Is there a trend here?

The story is basically about an old fisherman whose best days seem to be over. One day he strikes out to sea earlier and further than before, hoping to make one great catch. He snags a giant marlin, and from then on it is a battle of strength, wits and tenacity as he tries to subdue the creature and make his way home with his bounty.

 Anyway, this was a short book, which I finished fairly quickly. The writing was meant to be revolutionary at the time it was published. For me, I prefer my classics to be more meandering with long descriptive sentences. This has a very modern, conemporary feel to it.

Although I did not care so much for the writing style, the story and theme got me hooked. The ending particularly touched me and reminds me of the conundrum I used to face during staff performance appraisals - how do you address no results despite the great efforts you have put in?

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Author: Jennifer Egan

I was in the hunt for a book one Friday lunch break (things at the office were stressing me out so I had to resort to retail therapy 20 km away) but did not want a bodice ripper. The colourful cover attracted me, as did the golden circle in the bottom left corner. Pulitzer Prize winners must surely guarantee a good read, no?

Do not judge a book by its cover - or its first chapter. I was looking for a light, entertaining and easy romp. Like Kinsella. Or something semi-reflective like Nick Hornby (the allusion to music made me think of High Fidelity). What I got was rock and roll (or punk, to be more precise), divorce, suicide, illness, drugs, environmental issues. And ultimately, redemption.


Although the synopsis introduces us to Bennie and then Sasha, I related more to the latter. Bennie to me seemed too self-absorbed in only one side of him i.e. his passion for music - or are all musicians/music producers like that?

The book is like a collection of short stories, but it is also almost a novel. Each chapter has a different protagonist, in a different era, but through his or her tale you also get to know more about the previous protagonists. The format reminds me of another book I read a couple of years ago.

Because each chapter is told from a different character's POV, and the timeline is non-linear, it was a bit difficult to read. I admit to being stumped a few times when the narrative is told in the first person which happens to be a totally new character. The most interesting format (from a technical angle) is the powerpoint chapter. However the most poignant character to me is Rolph. His childhood innocence seems reflected in Sasha's son several chapters apart.
 
I found myself semi-quoting on line from the book:

If there are children, there must be a future, right?

Then I belatedly figured out that it was an allusion to the first line of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All" - I believe that children are our future...  Time may be a goon, but time also repeats itself.

Lilian's Story

Author: Kate Grenville

Lilian is a girl born into a middle-class family, the eldest of two children. Her father is strict, her mother a bit of a dreamer. Lilian herself dreams of acceptance and greatness, however her actions to win favour work against her. As she grows up, she enters a mental institution, and when she leaves she ends up as an eccentric bag lady, quoting Shakespeare.

I wouldn't say that this book was enjoyable, but it is a very moving tale. At times you feel that she is aware of how people perceive her i.e. as a madwoman, and that if she wants to she can choose to conform. However conformity would make her forgettable, as she is not as pretty, graceful or elegant as her peers. And so Lilian chooses to be happy and optimistic in her own way despite all that life throws in her wake.

The tale reminds me of a peripheral character from my childhood - a woman roaming the streets of my mother's hometown of Pasir Mas. Whenever we passed by the shophouses of the old town, we would spot her standing on the sidewalk, laughing alone with her head full of hair thrown back. I could tell that she was once beautiful, and now I wonder what stories she would have to tell if one were to ask, or what misfortunes had befallen her to drive her to such a state.  

Love in the Time of Cholera

Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Initially planned for the 2011 Global Reading Challenge, I was only able to complete it in Jan 2012.

The story of two lovers spanning more than 50 years, it takes place at a time when great social and technological changes occur in their city. Fermina Daza and Fiorentino Ariza fall in love as teenagers, but are separated when Fermina marries an up-and-coming doctor from a distinguished family. 50 years on, after her husband dies, Fiorentino professes his love for her again. Despite having had 422 affairs within that period of separation, Ariza claims he has been faithful to Daza.

Maybe this is typical of South American men, or Latino men, or men in general, but I fail to see how this makes it a great love story. Ariza is described as someone prone to lyricism due to his indulgence of poetry,  romances, and love letters - up to a point where he becomes ghost-writer to illiterate lovers and end up writing for both parties, such that the correspondence is in reality to himself. However, there is no explicit evidence or specimen of his writing in the book. His love is embodied in the physical sense through his many relationships with all sorts of women - widows and wives of other men included.

More striking to me is the love that Fermina Daza's husband, Dr Juvenal Urbino, has for his city. This is shown through his patronage of the Civil and Arts movements as well as his efforts at improving the health system. In a way, this also showcases the love that the author has for this region's history and geography, and most of all for the people inhabiting this city. Maybe this is the real love story it intends to portray.

In describing Dr Juvenal Urbino's fond memories of his hometown while studying in Paris:

"He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he stood at the railing of the ship...only then did he understand to what extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia."

And when the penitent doctor arrives at his wife's cousin's ranch for reconciliation:

"It is better to arrive in time than to be invited."

Another wonderful quote is from Ariza' Uncle Leo responding to 'accusations' of being rich:

"No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing."

Black Mamba Boy

Author: Nadifa Mohamed

I cannot be bothered to rewrite the plot, so just look up the reviews on Amazon if you are interested. In short summary, the story is about Jama, a ten-year-old Somalian boy from 1930's Aden, who journeys across North-East Africa to find his father. Along the way Jama meets clansmen, friends and soldiers as Africa and Europe becomes embroiled in the Second World War.

It took me quite a while to finish this book. Not because it was a tedious read, but the death of one of Jama's friends by torture at the hand of Italian soldiers really shook me to the core. It took me several weeks before I could pick up the book to continue reading.

The novel won the 2010 Betty Trask prize, and while I found the writing style a bit inconsistent, the context was definitely spellbinding. There were nuggets of wonderful prose and the descriptions of the places were very detailed. My favourite was this dialogue between Jama and his friend when describing Italian soldiers:

"So they're like the British?" piped up Abdi.

"Yes, but they use more hair oil."

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

I read the e-book, but realised when I got to the penultimate chapter that a hardcopy was sitting in the bookshelf downstairs all this while. Oh well...

Since this was an e-book, and written as a collection of twelve cases (such that I wasn't compelled to read the whole book in one go), it has taken me a long time to finish it. So much so that I cannot remember the plot of all the cases. What I did enjoy is the logic and deductive skills employed by the main protagonist, and having seen the recent movie, it was quite fun to picture the detective and his companion as they were in the film. Some of the cases had a very dark and sinister setting, while others were mere anecdotes of wit and cunning. All of them, though, portrayed Holmes' strong powers of observation. As he said to dear Watson in one of the first cases, "You climb the stairs everyday, but you fail to observe how many strps there are."

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The Night Bookmobile

Author: Audrey Niffenegger

My first ever graphic novel. It appeared in a review in The Star, and so made it to my wishlist. After a meeting in KLCC, I headed straight to Kinokuniya to acquire this, and I am very glad I did.

The story is about a woman who comes across a bookmobile in the middle of the night. The librarian is Mr Openshaw, who appears to know her on sight and keeps the bookmobile open 'from dusk till dawn'. As she steps into the bookmobile, she finds row upon row of all the books - all the STUFF - that she has read in her whole life. Unfinished reads appear as half-empty tomes, while books borrowed from libraries appear with their library stickers intact.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Mesmerized, she tells Mr Openshaw that she wishes to work with him, but he tells her it is impossible. Back in the real world, she gets a day job as a librarian, and eventually works her way up to become the Library Director, when she stumbles across the bookmobile for the last time. Once again she pleads with Openshaw for a position, and again he refuses. As she reaches her home, where she is surrounded by books and little else, she decides to end her life.

When she wakes up, she finds herself in the middle of a large library - READERS' HEAVEN! She sees Mr Openshaw, who gladly receives her as a librarian. When she asks to see her own collection, though, she is told that her books are no longer accessible.

"Only those who are alive can be Readers," Openshaw tells her. As a new librarian, she is assigned as Custodian of a new Reader - a young girl who is learning to read, and her first finished book is ready to be catalogued.

I found the idea of a bookmobile with your own personal reading collection immensely poetic and romantic, but to lose it after you die? Not so heavenly after all. However, judging from Mr Openshaw's habits, Custodians do get to read their Reader's collections. As long as they have the same tastes in books, that should not be such a problem.

If I had my own bookmobile, my Custodian would notice that my reading rate increases dramatically during my maternity leaves, and it would be filled with all sorts of material and paraphernalia. I remember reading anything and everything I could lay my hands on, including children's books and manuals. He or she would also note that I have lately acquired a habit of reading soppy romance novels when my husband is away and I am feeling lonesome. Either I am pining for him or pining for my youthful years as a teenager besotted with tall, dark and handsome fictional characters.

Read more reviews here.

The Museum of Innocence

Author: Orhan Pamuk

This is my first Orhan Pamuk novel, and also his first since winning the Nobel Prize in 2006. It is a story of two lovers in 1970's Istanbul, or rather one lover's obsession with the other. This obsession ultimately manifests itself as a museum, hence the title.

Kemal is a wealthy, westernised Turk, about to become engaged to the equally sophisticated Sibel, when he meets Fusun, a poor distant cousin, in a boutique. Taken by Fusun's beauty, he offers to tutor her in Maths in preparation for her university entrance exam. Soon Kemal and Fusun are entangled in a secret relationship and constantly getting tangled between the sheets at his mother's Merhamet Apartments, surrounded by trinkets and collectibles that had outlived their use. As his engagement with Sibel draws near, Kemal truly believes that he will be able to continue his relationship with both women, and so he invites Fusun and her family to his engagement party. Unfortunately Fusun finds out from some of the party guests that Kemal and Sibel had already consummated their relationship long before their engagement - although it was only when Sibel was 'absolutely sure that there would be in the end a wedding did she give herself to him'.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Frustrated, Fusun deserts Kemal, who plunges into depression. Sibel attempts to cheer him up, but eventually she leaves him too, breaking off the engagement. Kemal then sets off in search of his lost love.
When he finally finds her again, Fusun is living with her parents in Cukurcuma and married to a film director wannabe. The husband sees Kemal as a potential financier for his dream art film, in which Fusun is to be the star. Seeing this as a means to stay in contact with Fusun, and possibly ultimately win her back, Kemal plays along and starts to spend the next 8 years with Fusun's family, having most of his suppers in the small house in Cukurcuma. As a means to preserve the memories of the time spent there, Kemal starts collecting small artefacts from Fusun's household, particularly items that Fusun has come in contact with. This growing collection is later displayed in Kemal's museum.

I found this book a bit frustrating. Kemal's obsession with Fusun seems highly superficial. Despite Kemal's assertions of Fusun's kindness and wisdom, there is hardly any evidence of such behaviour in their interactions. Instead she comes across as a bit of a bimbo, whose loftiest aspirations is to become a movie star. Even when she dies in the end, I did not feel sorry for either of them, as the circumstances that lead to the accident were a direct result of what I find extremely childish behaviour - walking off in a tantrum and then insisting on driving, all because she was protected from mixing with the film crowd so many years ago. And it was not even something that she really wanted anymore!

What I do like about the book is the wonderfully descriptive writing of the scenes and sounds of 1970's and early 80's Istanbul, the glimpses of a society trying to find its place and identity as a modern, forward-looking nation - a society that appears almost embarassed of its traditions and culture. The book is almost self-deprecating in this respect, and sometimes I suspect it is also this self-depreciation that intentionally chooses to depict Kemal and Fusun's otherwise shallow relationship as one of the greatest love stories.

Read other reviews here.http://www.themuseumofinnocence.com/

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Author: Daniyal Mueenuddin

Originally I had intended to read a book by Orhan Pamuk, until my sister pointed out that Turkey is a European country (silly me, the term Asia Minor may have misled me). So we spent an evening at MPH looking for books from the South Asian subcontinent to make up the fifth entry for this Challenge. Books by Chinese and Indian authors I have already read, so this piece of work from Pakistan was something of a discovery.

This book is actually an anthology of 8 tales, interlinked in that they all revolve around the being and belongings of K.K. Harouni, an ancestral landowner from Punjab. However, he is the main character in only one story (the titular In Other Rooms, Other Wonders), where he falls for a servant girl and makes her his mistress. In other stories, he is part of the background - the benevolent employer of an army of servants, the rich uncle of a Western-educated nephew whose name is dropped into the conversation.

Most of the stories are about clandestine relationships - there were a couple that seemed to have the same plot, of a lowly woman having an affair with someone above her station, hoping it would give her a better life but, sadly, dismissed at the end. The rich don't seem to have it any better - the glitz and decadence doing little to give them true everlasting happiness. If there was any moral sermonising to be attached to these stories, the message would be to lead a chaste and honourable life - affairs will get you nowhere. The only story where the protagonist emerged somewhat victorious is Nawabdin Electrician - but then he only ever cheated the utilities company.

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Author: Paulo Coelho

The story is about Pilar who is reconciled with her childhood sweetheart after 10 years. During that period he has travelled and rediscovered religion, and when they meet again he is spreading a message on the feminine face of God.

He invites her to travel with him to France, where he confesses to love her. Despite her earlier resolve, Pilar finds herself reciprocating his feelings, and rediscovers her faith. She also discovers that he has a gift of curing the sick with his hands and is determined to spend the rest of her life as his companion in spreading his gift and the message of the Goddess. He, on the other hand, thinks that Pilar would rather have a normal life with a normal job, and so gives up his gift. It is this that brings Pilar to sit and weep by the river Piedra.

This book is touted as a story about love and the miracle of love. I think it is more about communication, or the different expectations of love and the result of not properly communicating that expectation. Pilar is willing to change her life to fulfill her lover's dreams and help him realise his potential. He (we never know his name), on the other hand, is willing to give up his ambition so that Pilar can continue with her everyday life, as he thinks all she wants in life is to settle down. He does not understand why she is upset rather than feel flattered by his sacrifice.

But isn't Pilar behaving in a truly womanly way? What female doesn't want to be the woman behind the successful man? The ambition and potential is what she loves most about him - reminding me of Renee Zellweger's lines in Jerry Maguire: "I love him for the man he wants to be and the man he almost is."

There was another idea I found more interesting in the book, where a priest relates an experiment in which a group of monkeys are taught to wash their bananas before eating them. The scientist conducting the experiment found out that other groups of monkeys began to do the same thing without ever coming into contact with the first group. The priest describes this as the world having a soul - when a certain number of the species knows something, the whole species will know it too. Malcolm Gladwell would call this The Tipping Point.

Disgrace

Author: J. M Coetzee

"For a man his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well." Thus we are introduced to David Lurie, a Communications professor at a technical university in Cape Town. And throughout the book, although it is written in the third person, it is very much written from Lurie’s perspective.

We first get to know Lurie from his scheduled visits to a prostitute named Soraya, who he stops meeting after he sees her with her children. He then seduces his student, Melanie, whose father lodges a sexual harassment complaint to the university, forcing Lurie to resign and retreat to his daughter Lucy’s farm, where she grows flowers and cares for dogs. He suspects her of being a lesbian and not too pleased with her lack of care for her appearance.

In an attempt to rekindle his relationship with Lucy, he gets to know her neighbours, including Petrus, who helps out at the farm. Another neighbour is a lady, Bev Shaw who runs an animal clinic. He finds her unattractive but has an affair with her.

One day three black strangers show up at the farm, asking to make a telephone call. Lurie is locked inside a bathroom and put on fire while his daughter is gang-raped. Later Lurie discovers that one of the rapists is related to Petrus, who was away when the attack happened. He thinks Petrus intentionally allowed the hoodlums to attack Lucy as a way of asserting his growing authority in the area. Lurie urges his daughter to leave the country, but she stubbornly refuses, and when she discovers she is pregnant, decides to keep the baby. Although unhappy about this, Lurie comes to accept her decision and eventually reconciles with her.

Throughout most of the book Lurie comes across as an arrogant intellectual who thinks he is too good for the modern world and can do no wrong, a remnant of the colonial times. He is condescending even when admitting his guilt to the academic committee, claiming to be a servant of Eros acting upon his rights of desire. His relationships with women are merely a means to satisfy his need for sex. The only situation in which he truly cares for someone was also the only time he could not act upon it, which was the attack on Lucy. This event, and those that follow, makes him realise that he is losing his place in the world, that he is no longer a mover and shaker in the world.

In the end Lurie accepts his fate, his fall from grace. As he carries a dog he has grown attached to into Bev’s clinic to be put to sleep, he tells her that, “Yes, I am giving him up.”

Up in the Air

Author: Walter Kirn

This is the movie tie-in edition, although I have yet to watch the movie. As the movie made it to the Oscars, I figured the book must be worth a read.

The story is narrated by the protagonist, Ryan Bingham. He is a Career Transition Counselor - a coach for people who get fired. He is about to clock one million frequent flyer miles on his company's account, and plans to resign shortly after achieving this personal target.

"To Know me you have to fly with me." Thus Bingham invites us to join him on a marathon trip over 9 cities in 6 days that will make him the 10th person to reach the coveted mark. The trip is supposed to end in his hometown where he is to attend his younger sister's third wedding.

The story starts with Bingham expounding the features of Airworld and his career. You get the feeling it's not the sensation of flying he enjoys, but the experience of the different airports, the business lounge and the passing relationships with people he meets both on and off the ground. Any semblance to a more longlasting bond with another human being seems to unnerve him, as is evident in his conversations with and about his family. At the same time, the book shows Bingham's growing disillisionment with his job and the people he looks up to, be they management mentors or finance gurus.

Ultimately, Bingham is a lonely figure who uses his pursuit of air points to distract himself from his sad, empty life. By the end of the book, he realises he doesn't want all those points anyway, despite his earlier obsession with them. A bit like when you buy something you've been saving money for and find out it's not really worth all that.

And that's kinda how I feel about this book. The premise was interesting enough, and the back cover is scattered with good reviews on how it "deliciously lambastes corporate America" and rivals anything by John Grisham. But it doesn't really have much action and not so much a lambasting - it felt more like a half-hearted slap that missed its mark. Halfway through Bingham is called in by his family to search for his missing sister, and that's where Bingham, or rather Kirn, starts losing it. Events that were building up throughout the plot seem to be easily dismissed in the end - the business parable he was writing, his speech at GoalQuest, the dream job at MythTech, even the million airmiles.

Or maybe that is the intention of the author, to show the futility of it all as we run along in this rat race. Pretty depressing for anyone with a career.

I'm now looking forward to the movie, more than before I read the book. I've read that it's better than the book, or at least different. Let's just hope it's not as sad. Otherwise I really need to perk myself up with a Judith Mcknaught historical romp.

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Ayat-Ayat Cinta

Author: Habiburrahman El Shirazy



This book, which has been turned into a movie and a song, is REALLY REALLY good.



Go out and read it.

And those of you who still wonder what 1 Malaysia stands for, just read the first few chapters to give you an idea.

Memanusiakan manusia. I like...

Tuhan Manusia

Author: Faisal Tehrani

"Andai kota itu peradaban, rumah kami adalah
budaya, dan menurut ibu, tiang serinya adalah agama."

translation: If civilisation is a city, then our home
is culture, and according to mother, its main pillar is religion.

The prose above greets you at the beginning of every chapter in the latest work by Faisal Tehrani.

Faisal Tehrani is noted as a thinking author. One local English magazine hailed him as one of Malaysia's Most Outstanding Individuals in 2005, describing him as "one of the rare ideologists in Malay literature". And having heard of his credentials and read his blog several times in the last couple of years, I decided to give his works a try.

Mind you, this is the first Malay novel I've read in a very long time. I usually approach Malay novels with some skepticism, seeing as how the few I've read before seem to be merely a tame translation of Mills & Boon romances, which seems wholly inappropriate in a Malaysian (Malay?) setting. And the multi-syllable Malay words and 'bahasa bunga-bunga' make the reading longer and more difficult for me - heck, I'm an engineer, I may be longwinded myself but give it to me straight to the point. No wonder I always go for the discussion/debate topics in Karangan BM.

'Tuhan Manusia' is first of all surprisingly devoid of the traits above. According to one review, "Take away the 'only just' plot, add a few footnotes and a bibliography, and you would've a formidable collection of essays, each demanding the reader digest it separately." I did find it engaging and easy enough to read the first time, though I will probably come back to revisit the novel and properly dwell on the issues brought up in the book. There were a lot of ideological and philosophical terms - pluralism, secularism, name any 'ism' and the word makes an appearance - but it was presented in a manner more palatable than 'Sophie's World'.

Anyway, back to the point of this so-called review. The author himself stated that this is probably his most ambitious work to date. And he tackles a most sensitive but extremely important issue affecting the Muslim world generally and Islam in Malaysia specifically: apostasy.

The protagonist is a teenaged Ali Taqi, pondering the fate of his brother Talha who has renounced Islam for Christianity. Ali Taqi strives to understand why and how his brother becomes an apostate. Eventually he strikes a stand against pluralism, which he believes to be one of the ideologies used to perpetrate apostacy among Muslims.

'Tuhan Manusia' is basically a 'How To Combat Apostasy' manual. His characters are role-players, examples of how to behave and how to deal with the issue. Even as the parents, the ustaz and a bus driver educates Ali Taqi, so is the author actually informing the reader of his proposed strategy. In writing this book, Faisal Tehrani has actually pitted himself against the "manusia yang tidak kenal diri ini pula, hah, menjadi seniman, mereka bikin filem, menulis novel malahan mementaskan teater maka makin ramai orang jahil yang rosak dan terus rosak..." - Ch. 20, pg 322.

Obviously a lot of research has been put into writing this book, with a large number of references to the Qur'an and Sunnah, as well as Sufism. As Ali Taqi himself stated to his mualaf friend Tse, "Hujah ilmiah dan akhlak yang menambatlah senjata sebenar Islam. Begitulah Islam disebarkan." Ch. 17, pg 247

If ever it was the intention of the author to do so, it certainly succeeded in sparking an interest in philosophy as much as Ali Taqi himself thirsts for it. My only regret is that, unlike the novel's main character, I am no longer a remaja lepasan SPM but a 31-year-old with only 9 years of youth left inside me. But it's never too late to start, right?

My only grouch about the book is its epilogue. Ali Taqi going back to his roots after an illustrious career as a philosopher is fine, but to have his daughter marry Tse's son, and the children's names similar to some of his former mentors is a bit - well, too much like the epilogue from Harry Potter. Fortunately he didn't go so dar as to marry Zehra.

Some more quotable quotes from the book:

"Masyarakat secara fitrah adalah pengikut kebenaran. Akan ada yang setia kepada kebatilan bukan kerana kebatilan itu kebenaran. Tetapi lebih kerana antara jambak keadilan itu, engkau cuba selitkan bunga kebenaran. Dan ini namanya fitnah.

Dan dalam keadaan serba fitnah siapa yang akan selamat? Ada, ada yang akan selamat, orang yang sesuai dengan takdir Ilahi. Dan percaya dengan keMahabijaksanaan Allah, orang jenis ini yang akan cuba menemukan kebenaran, dan bila dapat, mereka akan menggenggamnya dengan kemas..." Ch. 16, pg 241