4 colour-coded novels you should read and what they really mean

Indian Express

2 days ago

We are always surrounded by colour: cerulean sea waves with splashes of white, vermillion apples that are pale yellow when sliced through, and the neon green traffic lights. However, colours are not merely visual, they carry sentiments, memories, and meanings. They have often been used in art and literature to evoke certain feelings and symbolise particular meanings. Here are a few novels where colours are used to craft deeper narratives:
Bluets (Wave Books, pages 99, Rs 1294) is often referred to as a lyrical essay. As the title suggests, Bluets is a meditation on the colour blue written in the form of fragmented prose-poetry. Converging beauty, grief, and desire, part memoir and part poetry, Nelson reflects on love, loss, and suffering, all through the lens of blue.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983, The Color Purple (W&N, pages 288, Rs 399) is an epistolary novel written by Alice Walker. Considered an American modern classic, the novel reflects the experience of African American women in twentieth-century America. The novel spans decades and explores themes such as gendered violence and systematic racism through the letters of Celie. Albeit the use of the colour purple is subtle, it is a recurring motif in the story that symbolises awareness, transformation, beauty, and spirituality.
Written by the acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book (Penguin Books Limited, pages 480, Rs 499) follows the story of Galip, a lawyer, who is on the search for his missing wife and a popular newspaper columnist, Celal. Blending mystery, metafiction, and existential themes, the result is an experimental novel that meditates on identity through an enchanting and elusive tale. Pamuk utilises the concept of the colour black to create an atmosphere of mystery and obscurity, a shadowy blackness that permeates the novel.