Kane and Abel by Jeffery Archer | Book review

Jeffery Archer’s Kane and Abel grabs the reader right from the first wail in the first passage. Two births take place on the same day, one in American family of Wealthy Bankers and the other in far away Russia, in the dusk of World War-I.

It traces of these two lives of Kane and Abel, and how destiny makes their paths cross.
The novel takes us with the boys through their childhood to schooling to loss of virginity to their matrimony to their parenthood to being old men. All through the story, Kane and Abel cross each others path and end up being at loggerheads.

As the backdrop, Archer chooses the most fascinating decades in world history that is World-War I to Titanic to Great Depression to World War II to time after the War. This period has been such a rich backdrop to so many of great works of our time. Thus we are sucked into these two stories while also feel, these great events in History through Kane and Abel.

It has been #1 New York Best Seller for a long time referenced in innumerous moments in cinema, like Deepika Padukone as she learns about stocks from the people she carries in her cab in Hindi movie "Bachna Ae Hasseno"and more recently in Slumdog Millionaire, when the the brothers survive a few years on trains selling items and stealing, which is a direct lift from childhood days of Abel

Verdict- a must read, because of its un-putdown-able quality. An absolute classic.

Written by Ali Naqvi.