Sacred Games
By Vikram Chandra
After seven years worth of creation and a fierce bidding war for publishing rights, including a reportedly enormous advance for the author, Vikram Chandra’s magnificent 900-page tome delivers an unprecedented look at modern Bombay, for all its faults and positives. It also offers a complex, engaging detective line.Using multiple perspectives including the intrepid Sikh police detective and the dead Hindu gangster boss, Chandra weaves a narrative web that encompasses India as a modern society, as well as its violent, dark underbelly.
Seth Marko at Warwick’s made this week’s selection.