Vikas Swarup
If you’ve read Q&A (or seen its more famous screen adaptation) and Six Suspects, you’d recognise the narrative style in this as well – a series of sub plots driven by a connecting thread. In this case, an eccentric businessman sets a series of 7 tests for an initially reluctant young woman in order to prove herself capable of being the CEO of his conglomerate.
An ordinary person and her responses to circumstances that one would find familiar if one lived in India, that’s pretty much what the tale is. I finished the book in 2 days, would have finished it in one if not for a splitting headache. (not because of the book) That’s a testament to the pace of the narrative. Except for a slight lag towards the end, the plot is an edge-of-the-seat roller coaster. It also manages to showcase the various problems we face as a nation – from relatively small scale ones like khap diktats to large scale corruption. It also has characters whom one can easily map to real life popular personalities. That’s the good part. (more…)