There are great books and there are those stupendously spicy, spinning satire assimilations. Yeah, I am talking about those which somehow tend to overpower your emotions in a strangely uncanny way. That is because they happen to be written in such an unexpected, inconceivably devilish manner that boom goes our brain before we fully grasp the magnitude of what exactly hit us off guard. So, before you try and completely absorb the true meaning of my words, let me first tell you, guys, about a book which has made me yearn for more tales of satire, twice perhaps of what it has to offer, thanks to its par excellence writing.

Satire, I feel, is one of those genres that are often tricky to create since it usually involves a lot of mind-bending background work because the story needs to be spot on as far as cracking the satirical code goes. That is because, albeit shrouded in lighthearted, comical humour, satire has the higher purpose of driving home the “whole point”. Writers using exaggeration, irony, and a host of other emotional devices to make their point towards a particular character, tradition, or prevalent practice that they want to get into the discussion or comment on is tricky business, huh?

Being one of my favourite genres in reading, it was evident that I get super intrigued with F*** My Brain, Amir Shaheen’s latest dabble in the assimilation of satirical tales has become my latest favourite, thanks to the amazing amount of excitement and uncanny “dope” (as I like to call it), Amir has managed to fixate to this amazing bouquet of stories, each of which has its beautiful redolence to impart. The tales have been written in a refreshing and unique style, bringing forth numerous perspectives that Amir has collected over a while, slices of life served with a dash of satire and emotional spritzing, dishing out real wanderings laced with humour. 

 Creating a reasonably cognizant balance between the lurch of real vis-à-vis absurd, fantastical narrations, Amir here tries to explore and successfully broach topics and issues, especially those which lie in questionable territories. The larger picture though, here is that they all have one thing in common-an underlying message being conveyed and brought to the table through general tales of humour. The peculiarity of these tales ranging into a myriad of themes from religion, racism, women abuse, post-apocalypse, immigrant plights and human nature, Amir’s stories act like a mini mallet, incessantly yet subtly pounding through, on the insides of your mind, compelling you to think beyond what you see and comprehend the bigger picture. That for me, is the beauty of his writing as also the whole point of this satirical kaleidoscope.

For instance, Mustafa’s Time Machine and Incident at the Zoo gave me a delve into the deeper bestial instincts of human nature, the former using thrill and adrenaline as a tool while the latter being spruced up with a slapstick sort of humour. Similarly, in The Man Without Shame, Where Are My 72 Virgins?, Shoot First, and Ask Later: A Diary was a stark mirror depicting many grave realities of our species, enshrouding them in different kinds of setups, real, fictional, and crossbred too.

Shoot first, ask later actually made me mull if this is really how we, as humans, would transpire out eventually—do we turn into heartless prats of this sort later on in the cosmic cycles? Or would we ever try to keep humanity alive even after the end of the world?

The Incident at the Zoo, a tale I enjoyed is again, a stark reminder of some of the ground realities related to our human species as a whole. I mean, yeah, it sure as hell, felt at one point in time, as if this were to be possible and we would be in captivity with animals taking charge of the place, thanks to the blockheaded beings we are becoming, totally dependent and living in technology, enslaving ourselves to AI eventually, perhaps. Indeed, if God decides to turn tables on us, making animals so spirited and controlling that they decide to actually go ahead and keep us in captivity, now wouldn’t that be a real twist in the tale of the cosmos?

See my point? That is exactly what Amir’s tales do to you. Taking you through unexplored terrains, yet empowering you with so much that by the end of it, you shall want to embark yet again on a path as light and obscure, yet thrilled by the yearning of enlightenment and discovering what you know, but simply want to pretend that you don’t. Well, we human beings are conditioned that way, trying to avoid what keeps staring at us in the face all the time, whilst running behind what we cannot “hypothetically “take control of.

Exploring such themes through comical relief is no joke huh, which Amir has done and achieved super successfully, creating tales which stay with you for long after you are done and dusted. So, you might technically even get an urge to witness “The Day Amir got slapped by Imam” once you are done reading it as I did. So, consider it the man’s miraculous hold over your senses through his writing, simply put.

Related:

• Subjective Bliss by Vez Jauffur – A Satirical Take On Today’s Fast-Changing Society
• Beyond World’s End: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

All in all, it’s a great book. You have to, I repeat, simply have to be picking and reading, because, hey, satire is not about understanding the underlying message alone; Amir’s satirical treats are much more than that. They are tiny bubbles of mystique, some filled with humour, others with irony, and many others with God knows what other wondrous facets, waiting to latch and explode themselves in your very thought bowl. So, before I go crazy, you guys go and check this one out now!

So, hope you guys liked my book review F*** My Brain! by Amir Shaheen.

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Adios Amigos! P.S, a line from one of my favourite tales before I depart

The cosmos is a vast network of chaos, perfectly intertwined

Well, splendidly put as it shows a truly “organized chaos” in the mind of the writer who wrote this, ain’t it? Bravo Amir!