I have just finished reading this 'epic' by Vikram Chandra. It is over 900 pages long and it did feel like a journey when I was reading it over many weekends and late nights. It is a book that aims high and tries to engage readers with many layers of the Indian life that crosses two centuries. I enjoyed most of it, especially that on the police force, and in particular mundane encounters of the Sikh policeman. The bits on the gangster, though interesting at the beginning, was a trying later on. Firstly, I was not convinced that the narrative voice was appropriate throughout the novel. But one of the biggest slang had to be the endless preaches from 'guru', which was a bore, and I ended up skipping quite a few pages from the second half of the novel.
This is of a hybrid genre and I wonder what it was like to read his earlier works. Would be interesting to find out.
So far, my favourite novel by Indian authors is still 'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy. Both writers are involved in film-script writings. I image VC's film would be materials for typical Bollywood stuff, when AR's could be more like an European cinema.
A friend of mine once commented that the best writers these days are from India. I think he might have a point here.
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