Christopher Hitchens

Men Of Manhattan #3. Christopher Royce had a hard life since the beginning, which led him to be a withdrawn and serious man. This is further aggravated after an event that marked his life, so Christopher decides to focus only on his work, making him even more lonely if possible. Nowadays, he only trusts a couple of people because it's impossible for him to open up once more. Full of resentment, distrust and tired with the life he's living, he accepts the present his best friend gives him for his birthday: A trip to Hawaii. What Christopher doesn't expect is that this trip will become the best experience of his life when he meets Helena; a happy, outgoing, tenacious woman determined to make the man with serious face and melancholic eyes see that life is too short not to take risks. The problem will come when the trip comes to an end and they have to say goodbye and walk away.

She bought the ring herself. Ayesha Adams planned every detail which includes the venue, the words, even the dress her best friend picked out. She got down on one knee in front of every employee at Azul Corporation and told Chris, the man she had quietly loved for four years, that she wanted to spend her life with him. He told her to get up. That she had embarrassed him. That she should leave. Her dress ripped on the way out and Gemma filmed the whole thing. The next morning, Ayesha found out her best friend was pregnant for him. So she did the only thing left with any dignity in it. She resigned, packed her life into boxes, moved across the city, took out a loan, and built something of her own. She stopped being the girl no one looked at twice. She became someone men crossed rooms for.And Chris noticed. He calls but he ignores him. He shows up at her gallery. She smiles and asks him to leave. He donates anonymously to her business but she thanks no one in particular. He follows her to galas. She dances with other men. He is losing his mind and she is just getting started. But then her mother falls ill. And Chris does something that no amount of anger or pride or self-preservation can make Ayesha ignore.

The novel is mainly about the forgotten British poet/writer named C. J Richards who lived in Burma/Myanmar in colonial times and he believed himself as a Burmophile. He served as I.C.S (Indian Civil Servant) and when he retired from I.C.S service, he was a D.C (District Commissioner) and he left for England a year before Burma gained its independence in 1948. He came to Burma in 1920 to work in civil service after passing the hardest I.C.S examination. He wrote several books on Burma and contributed many monthly articles to Guardian Magazine published in Burma from 1953 to 1974 or 1975. Though he wrote several books which had much literary merit to both communities, Britain and Burma (Myanmar), people failed to recognize him. The story has two parts: one part is set in the contemporary Yangon (then called Rangoon) in 2016 context and a young literary enthusiast named “Lin” found out unexpectedly the forgotten writer’s poetry book and there is surely a good deal of time gap that led him into a quest to know more about the author’s life. The setting is quite different comparing to colonial Burma and independence Myanmar (Burma), early twentieth century and 2016 which is a transitional period in Myanmar. The writer’s life is fictionalized in the novel and most of the facts are taken from his personal stories and other reference books. It is a kind of historical novel with a twist and it has comparatively constructed the two different periods in Myanmar history to convince readers, locally and abroad more about history, authorship, humanity, colonialism, and transitional development in Myanmar today.

The day before Chris Carter and I were supposed to get engaged, my parents sent me to prison. Three years later, when I was finally released, Chris was the only one who came to pick me up. I knew he despised me. I trembled, keeping my head down, hoping to slip away unnoticed. But he blocked my path, frowning. “Emily York? You stink.” He pinched his nose and told me to get in the car. I fell to my knees, desperately begging him not to take me home. If he did, I would die. He looked at me with chilling indifference and said, “Then go ahead and die.” I agreed. But later, he cried and begged me to stay alive.

My wife, Charlene Weber, has taken me to the Scumbag Court. If I'm found guilty, all my assets will be taken from me, and I'll face 10 years of imprisonment. Charlene, on the other hand, will get to marry her ideal man—Joel Quinlan—as she wishes. If I'm acquitted of all charges, Charlene will be made to divorce me without alimony. She'll also be cursed with bad luck and disfigured so badly she'll be the ugliest woman in the world. Conversely, I'll be given 10 million dollars in reparations and gain a lifetime's worth of good luck. Everyone is advising me to admit to my mistakes, but only because Charlene has always been a virtuous, devoted wife in their eyes. They think that there must surely be some complicated grievances between us at the moment. However, they are unaware that I've been reborn. This time, I'm going to tear off Charlene's mask of hypocrisy.

On the day my father died, his seven most trusted men all met violent deaths within the same twenty-four hours. Hugh Castillo sacrificed his legs to butcher the gang and put me in power. “Taz, don’t be scared. Those monsters are gone. You’re finally free.” In the years he lay paralyzed, I tried over a thousand experimental drugs and prayed at every church across the country. I hunted down every possible remedy, praying for just one that would bring him back to his feet. When Hugh learned of this, he swallowed a bottle of pills one night to end his life. After he was revived, he smiled and wiped the tears from my face. “Taz, I don’t want to be a dead weight. You deserve a better life than this.” That night, we held each other and wept. We swore that from then on, no matter what, we would never leave each other behind. But seven years later, a sweet-looking girl showed up at my door with a thousand photos I was never meant to see. “Every month, while you were praying to God in churches, Huey was busy trying out new positions with me. “Ms. Sheargold, don’t you know that used goods like you kill a man’s desire? It was no wonder he’d rather play the cripple than touch you.” I looked through every single photo, then put them up for auction underground.