Cracking book , 04 Sep 2008
Thoroughly enjoyable - stories weave in and out of one another, the excellent use of language allows the story to rattle along, and loose ends are tied up. Ten on ten.

Is this the real india?, 23 May 2008
I began this novel with high expectations--I relish long novels--Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Dostoevky, Tolstoy, Vikram Seth come to mind--and indeed, I found it from the start riveting. Life in Mumbai, Sartaj the cop, even Gatoinde, the anti-hero--all came alive. But in the end I fear I lost interest, mainly because, I think, I was not made to care enough about the main characters. Indeed, most of the women seem very cardboard characters without much reality about them. And although some people seem to have found the non-translation of Indian words, (and Indian songs) OK, I found it irritating, and very unhelpful. And I confess that I found the whole working up of the [atomic]bomb episode (climax?)so bizarre as to be almost laughable.
Chandra is a good writer, with the ability to crank up the excitement, and with touches of detail that are striking and imaginative, and though I found Gatoinde unbelievable, I felt a lot of empathy and liking for Sartaj. But all the while, I was asking, Is this what modern India is really like? Are the police this corrupt and bad? Is crime and gang warfare this prevalent? Are there so many aspiring film stars ready to be corrupted and seduced as Chandra portrays? Is India really like this?
But in the end, this is not the "great Indian novel" that some reviewers seem to have discovered.

Thriller and social study in one, 30 Apr 2008
Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games combines the attractions of genre literature with a meticulous social portrayal of that most fascinating of countries: modern India.

The novel's chosen format is that of a detective story, with ex-playboy, philosophically inclined Sikh police inspector Sartaj Singh chasing the tail of Bombay's most notorious gangster boss. We are also given the gory and satisfyingly prurient tale of the gangster's rise to chiefdom. But it is best never to betray too much of a thriller's plot. Suffice it to mention that the storyline takes on nationally and even internationally threatening dimensions, as well as going through the Bombay mob and the police's more modest, everyday battles.

The pace never flags through the book's massive 900 pages. No doubt Chandra is a capital storyteller, but this also owes something to the author's evident knowledge of his subject and acquaintance with the travails of the Bombay police force; one can feel the author has sweated and put in the hours for his reader. And beyond this, whole swathes of Indian society are put under the microscope. This is no set-piece version of sacred, historical India. What we have is an equally brutal and endearing, and invariably contradictory picture of a country in full transformation. Sacred Games ranges from the Bollywood scene to Bengali slums, from Naxalite battlegrounds to new-rich condominiums and from the Singhs' family farm in Maharashtra to the corridors of power in Delhi. It even manages to make the inevitable expository piece about the partition tragedy realistic and appealing.

The writing is elegant without - surprisingly for such a tome - being wordy, granting a large place to dialogue. It contains a number of English Indian words, but while this leaves the non-native curious, it isn't detrimental to his or her comprehension or enjoyment. I was warming up to my own imagined ending, to be disappointed that the author chose another direction. On reflection, though, Chandra's moralistic but not moralising denouement is much better than mine.


Of Sacred Games,'cops and robbers' and un'holy' men, 13 Mar 2008
It was a matter of pure coincidence that I bought this book-my decision had more to do with making avail the free postage facilities provided by one of the larger online presences when buying xmas presents, than an attempt to buy myself a fat little read.Little did I realise then that this little bit of indulgence to myself would provide me with unbridled satisfaction for a good few weeks.
Its almost 3 months since I cursed over the first page and about 3 pages down fell in love with it.Over the next 900 or so pages one is treated to the briefly intertwined but otherwise elaborately diverse lives of Sartaj Singh,a Mumbai police inspector and Ganesh Gaitonde the underworld Hindu don.Around this is woven the intricate politics of mumbai-between the mafia,the politicians and the various police departments.
But for me, the real allure of this book is 'mumbai' itself.Throughout this opus,Vikram Chandra describes the city people associate it with. The dust, the noise, grime and dirt,the scent of the sea[sometimes odour too] are all things that make his megapolis the city it is.To me ,sitting in my squeaky clean Cambridge apartment,this brings back memories of home,of gangster stories that we teenagers used to talk about in the classroom.

This is not a great literary classic, it is more of a paper Bollywood blockbuster.Vikram Chandra has written a novel about the real India, about its inhabitants that feature more in the crime sections of the news but neverthe-less have the lives so inherently linked to the Mumbai bloodline.And,it differs from the poncy diaspora novels that Indian literature is so full of. Hopefully, this novel marks the beginning of a new genre of english writing in India ,one which through the liberal use of the mixed vernacular can coexist with the more conservative form.


Hard Work, 27 Feb 2008
I have to say that reading this book is still a work in progress for me. I bought this book largely on the grounds of the synopsis and the rave reviews it had received, but I have to say that I think I am reading a different book. So far it has not given me any great insight into life in Mumbai or indeed into any of the characters within the book, combined with a story that moves at a snails pace it does make me wonder what I have actually been reading about.
One of the biggest frustrations for me is that there are entire pasages that are largely unintelligible due to the liberal use of colloquialisms and comments on the caste system. I don't even think that a glossary would help as I may well develop RSI from flicking to the back of the book to find out what the author is writing about.

Cracking book , 04 Sep 2008
Thoroughly enjoyable - stories weave in and out of one another, the excellent use of language allows the story to rattle along, and loose ends are tied up. Ten on ten.

Is this the real india?, 23 May 2008
I began this novel with high expectations--I relish long novels--Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Dostoevky, Tolstoy, Vikram Seth come to mind--and indeed, I found it from the start riveting. Life in Mumbai, Sartaj the cop, even Gatoinde, the anti-hero--all came alive. But in the end I fear I lost interest, mainly because, I think, I was not made to care enough about the main characters. Indeed, most of the women seem very cardboard characters without much reality about them. And although some people seem to have found the non-translation of Indian words, (and Indian songs) OK, I found it irritating, and very unhelpful. And I confess that I found the whole working up of the [atomic]bomb episode (climax?)so bizarre as to be almost laughable.
Chandra is a good writer, with the ability to crank up the excitement, and with touches of detail that are striking and imaginative, and though I found Gatoinde unbelievable, I felt a lot of empathy and liking for Sartaj. But all the while, I was asking, Is this what modern India is really like? Are the police this corrupt and bad? Is crime and gang warfare this prevalent? Are there so many aspiring film stars ready to be corrupted and seduced as Chandra portrays? Is India really like this?
But in the end, this is not the "great Indian novel" that some reviewers seem to have discovered.

Thriller and social study in one, 30 Apr 2008
Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games combines the attractions of genre literature with a meticulous social portrayal of that most fascinating of countries: modern India.

The novel's chosen format is that of a detective story, with ex-playboy, philosophically inclined Sikh police inspector Sartaj Singh chasing the tail of Bombay's most notorious gangster boss. We are also given the gory and satisfyingly prurient tale of the gangster's rise to chiefdom. But it is best never to betray too much of a thriller's plot. Suffice it to mention that the storyline takes on nationally and even internationally threatening dimensions, as well as going through the Bombay mob and the police's more modest, everyday battles.

The pace never flags through the book's massive 900 pages. No doubt Chandra is a capital storyteller, but this also owes something to the author's evident knowledge of his subject and acquaintance with the travails of the Bombay police force; one can feel the author has sweated and put in the hours for his reader. And beyond this, whole swathes of Indian society are put under the microscope. This is no set-piece version of sacred, historical India. What we have is an equally brutal and endearing, and invariably contradictory picture of a country in full transformation. Sacred Games ranges from the Bollywood scene to Bengali slums, from Naxalite battlegrounds to new-rich condominiums and from the Singhs' family farm in Maharashtra to the corridors of power in Delhi. It even manages to make the inevitable expository piece about the partition tragedy realistic and appealing.

The writing is elegant without - surprisingly for such a tome - being wordy, granting a large place to dialogue. It contains a number of English Indian words, but while this leaves the non-native curious, it isn't detrimental to his or her comprehension or enjoyment. I was warming up to my own imagined ending, to be disappointed that the author chose another direction. On reflection, though, Chandra's moralistic but not moralising denouement is much better than mine.


Of Sacred Games,'cops and robbers' and un'holy' men, 13 Mar 2008
It was a matter of pure coincidence that I bought this book-my decision had more to do with making avail the free postage facilities provided by one of the larger online presences when buying xmas presents, than an attempt to buy myself a fat little read.Little did I realise then that this little bit of indulgence to myself would provide me with unbridled satisfaction for a good few weeks.
Its almost 3 months since I cursed over the first page and about 3 pages down fell in love with it.Over the next 900 or so pages one is treated to the briefly intertwined but otherwise elaborately diverse lives of Sartaj Singh,a Mumbai police inspector and Ganesh Gaitonde the underworld Hindu don.Around this is woven the intricate politics of mumbai-between the mafia,the politicians and the various police departments.
But for me, the real allure of this book is 'mumbai' itself.Throughout this opus,Vikram Chandra describes the city people associate it with. The dust, the noise, grime and dirt,the scent of the sea[sometimes odour too] are all things that make his megapolis the city it is.To me ,sitting in my squeaky clean Cambridge apartment,this brings back memories of home,of gangster stories that we teenagers used to talk about in the classroom.

This is not a great literary classic, it is more of a paper Bollywood blockbuster.Vikram Chandra has written a novel about the real India, about its inhabitants that feature more in the crime sections of the news but neverthe-less have the lives so inherently linked to the Mumbai bloodline.And,it differs from the poncy diaspora novels that Indian literature is so full of. Hopefully, this novel marks the beginning of a new genre of english writing in India ,one which through the liberal use of the mixed vernacular can coexist with the more conservative form.


Hard Work, 27 Feb 2008
I have to say that reading this book is still a work in progress for me. I bought this book largely on the grounds of the synopsis and the rave reviews it had received, but I have to say that I think I am reading a different book. So far it has not given me any great insight into life in Mumbai or indeed into any of the characters within the book, combined with a story that moves at a snails pace it does make me wonder what I have actually been reading about.
One of the biggest frustrations for me is that there are entire pasages that are largely unintelligible due to the liberal use of colloquialisms and comments on the caste system. I don't even think that a glossary would help as I may well develop RSI from flicking to the back of the book to find out what the author is writing about.


Half-way house, 26 Jun 2008
Red Earth and Pouring Rain reads like the first shot of a great writer still finding his voice.

Chandra loosely intertwines two stories: one, set in India, an adventure tale in the style of old epics, and the other a modern American road story. The problem is that one infects the reading of the other; as in the mating of the mare with the donkey, the result is sterile. The earnestness of the fantastic old tale is lost. The Indian gods' appearance in a modern setting feels too much like Rushdie without the philosophy, the American road story like diaspora writing without a motive.

Perhaps Chandra didn't dare write only the epic, where one feels his real interest lay. Maybe his first submission wouldn't have been accepted by publishers without the homage to all that Indian-in-exile-on-a-US-campus stuff. And the book contains interesting writing on Anglo-Indian relations. But if, like me, you enjoyed Sacred Games and are looking for something else to read by the same author, you are better off waiting for his next novel.

Disappointing, 22 Mar 2005
Vikram Chandra's debut novel has received significant critical acclaim, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book, and a swag of favourable reviews on this website. Despite being interested in Indian culture and history, and being an avid reader of contemporary English language fiction set in South Asia, I regrettably found Chandra's 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' to be overall one of the most disappointing novels that I've ever read.

'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' is a novel of stories, and stories within stories, paying homage to the magic of storytelling. Stories are delivered to people - and gods in the Hindu pantheon - that come to assemble in the maidan. The most enjoyable sections of this novel are those revolving around developments in this village square as the storytelling unfolds, passages that Chandra intersperses throughout the work that function as transition markers between the sessions of story-telling: regrettably they account for a mere twenty-eight pages - a short story's worth of prose - in a massive tome of 618 pages.

Chandra's novel consists of two broad intertwined narratives glued together by the enjoyable transition scenes: a historical narrative spanning thousands of years of life on the sub-continent, and a contemporary story. The shorter of these, and by far the more enjoyable, is the contemporary story of Abhay, an Indian student returned from the United States. Abhay's adventures also illustrate the (generally negative) effects of the United States, and the West generally, on India's young elite, although perhaps Chandra is a touch heavy-handed in his portrayal of America's moral licentiousness, with two of a mere handful of characters including a female porn star that everybody appears to recognise, and a former centrefold whose allure for Abhay hasn't dimmed since he first set eyes on her in his Indian schooldays.

For the first two hundred pages or so, a confusing cast of characters are introduced and Chandra provides scant character development, little justification for the reader to take any interest in the events portrayed. Accordingly, Chandra fails to establish the essential compact between writer and reader that the words on the page are somehow more than mere words, and as a result my train of thought frequently drifted elsewhere. Primarily I persisted reading the novel on the strength of Abhay's tale and the scenes in the maidan - and a pigheaded resolve not to discard a book partly read! Granted the historical narrative becomes more cohesive with the arrival of brothers Sikander and Chotta, and half-sibling Sanjay - forgive me if this is not the correct familial relationship of the trio as even this is not without confusion - although I still did not identify with any character, and the remaining two-thirds of this lengthy work, with its liberal doses of magic realism, reads like a poor man's Rushdie.

Disappointing, 22 Mar 2005
Vikram Chandra's debut novel has received significant critical acclaim, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book, and a swag of favourable reviews on this website. Despite being interested in Indian culture and history, and being an avid reader of contemporary English language fiction set in South Asia, I regrettably found Chandra's 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' to be overall one of the most disappointing novels that I've ever read.

'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' is a novel of stories, and stories within stories, paying homage to the magic of storytelling. Stories are delivered to people - and gods in the Hindu pantheon - that come to assemble in the maidan. The most enjoyable sections of this novel are those revolving around developments in this village square as the storytelling unfolds, passages that Chandra intersperses throughout the work that function as transition markers between the sessions of story-telling: regrettably they account for a mere twenty-eight pages - a short story's worth of prose - in a massive tome of 618 pages.

Chandra's novel consists of two broad intertwined narratives glued together by the enjoyable transition scenes: a historical narrative spanning thousands of years of life on the sub-continent, and a contemporary story. The shorter of these, and by far the more enjoyable, is the contemporary story of Abhay, an Indian student returned from the United States. Abhay's adventures also illustrate the (generally negative) effects of the United States, and the West generally, on India's young elite, although perhaps Chandra is a touch heavy-handed in his portrayal of America's moral licentiousness, with two of a mere handful of characters including a female porn star that everybody appears to recognise, and a former centrefold whose allure for Abhay hasn't dimmed since he first set eyes on her in his Indian schooldays.

For the first two hundred pages or so, a confusing cast of characters are introduced and Chandra provides scant character development, little justification for the reader to take any interest in the events portrayed. Accordingly, Chandra fails to establish the essential compact between writer and reader that the words on the page are somehow more than mere words, and as a result my train of thought frequently drifted elsewhere. Primarily I persisted reading the novel on the strength of Abhay's tale and the scenes in the maidan - and a pigheaded resolve not to discard a book partly read! Granted the historical narrative becomes more cohesive with the arrival of brothers Sikander and Chotta, and half-sibling Sanjay - forgive me if this is not the correct familial relationship of the trio as even this is not without confusion - although I still did not identify with any character, and the remaining two-thirds of this lengthy work, with its liberal doses of magic realism, reads like a poor man's Rushdie.

A tale of splendour and desolation... narrated by a monkey ?, 01 Mar 2004
This massive, complex, multi-facetted book can be read in many ways: as a contemporary attempt to recapture the epic complexities of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; as a diatribe against the evils of colonialism (both the nineteenth-century British version and its new American counterpart); as an attack on the emptiness of modern capitalist consumerism... No doubt all true in their way, but for me the most astute comment on the book comes from Adam Thorpe (a man who knows a thing or two about storytelling himself): "telling a story - hundreds of them - becomes its own life-preserving act".

And what a story it is. Indian student Abhay, recently returned from the U.S.A., shoots a monkey which is stealing food. The badly wounded creature, rescued by his horrified relatives, announces that it contains the soul of the poet Sanjay: when Yama, God of the Dead, turns up (rapidly followed by several other minor cabinet ministers of the Hindu pantheon), Sanjay negotiates a stay of execution in exchange for his life story. (The obvious parallel here is with Sheherazade in "The Thousand and One Nights", and certainly Chandra's novel is very much "about" the power of narrative.) Sanjay tells us a tale that has it all: he has lived through most of the period of British colonialism, and spares us none of its horrors and injustices; but his tale also has love interest; epic battle scenes; a strong dash of magical realism, or even magical surrealism (twins are born miraculously after the consumption of sticky buns; Sanjay becomes a creature of the Undead to pursue fellow immortal Jack the Ripper through the streets of Victorian London); and perhaps most remarkably, recurrent scenes of emotional desolation on an epic scale (it's a difficult mood to describe, but no-one does it as well as Chandra: the same mood recurs in his collection of linked novellas, "Love and Longing in Bombay"). Intercut with Sanjay's tale, and drawing ironic parallels between British and American imperialism, is Abhay's own narrative of his experiences as a student in America: this has its own scenes of epic emotional desolation.

A strange, beautiful and unique book; and the best story (indeed, hundreds of them) I've read for a long time.

Symbols of resistance, 03 Jan 2004
Red Earth and Pouring Rain is a remarkable novel. The author has spun a web of intriguing stories, exploring the impact of British colonialism on India and the Indian people.
With an overwhelming and often humorous use of symbolism, Chandra deals with events and issues that have shaped India with devastating consequences. Independence, partition and today's communal violence are all located in the social antagonisms unleashed by colonisation.
At its heart, Red Earth and Pouring Rain conveys the torment of being robbed of a cultural identity. The novel's many characters all struggle with a sense of being a stranger in a foreign land-a theme that Chandra explores using both Indian and European characters.
Out of these struggles for personal identity there come stories of resistance to colonial rule-from a Calcutta printer, who secretes hidden subversive messages in the books he prints, to the hero of the book who leads an armed mutiny against the British.
Few books, fiction or non-fiction, have got me thinking so much about India and the affects of British colonialism. The parallels for the new century couldn't be any closer.

Cracking book , 04 Sep 2008
Thoroughly enjoyable - stories weave in and out of one another, the excellent use of language allows the story to rattle along, and loose ends are tied up. Ten on ten.

Is this the real india?, 23 May 2008
I began this novel with high expectations--I relish long novels--Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Dostoevky, Tolstoy, Vikram Seth come to mind--and indeed, I found it from the start riveting. Life in Mumbai, Sartaj the cop, even Gatoinde, the anti-hero--all came alive. But in the end I fear I lost interest, mainly because, I think, I was not made to care enough about the main characters. Indeed, most of the women seem very cardboard characters without much reality about them. And although some people seem to have found the non-translation of Indian words, (and Indian songs) OK, I found it irritating, and very unhelpful. And I confess that I found the whole working up of the [atomic]bomb episode (climax?)so bizarre as to be almost laughable.
Chandra is a good writer, with the ability to crank up the excitement, and with touches of detail that are striking and imaginative, and though I found Gatoinde unbelievable, I felt a lot of empathy and liking for Sartaj. But all the while, I was asking, Is this what modern India is really like? Are the police this corrupt and bad? Is crime and gang warfare this prevalent? Are there so many aspiring film stars ready to be corrupted and seduced as Chandra portrays? Is India really like this?
But in the end, this is not the "great Indian novel" that some reviewers seem to have discovered.

Thriller and social study in one, 30 Apr 2008
Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games combines the attractions of genre literature with a meticulous social portrayal of that most fascinating of countries: modern India.

The novel's chosen format is that of a detective story, with ex-playboy, philosophically inclined Sikh police inspector Sartaj Singh chasing the tail of Bombay's most notorious gangster boss. We are also given the gory and satisfyingly prurient tale of the gangster's rise to chiefdom. But it is best never to betray too much of a thriller's plot. Suffice it to mention that the storyline takes on nationally and even internationally threatening dimensions, as well as going through the Bombay mob and the police's more modest, everyday battles.

The pace never flags through the book's massive 900 pages. No doubt Chandra is a capital storyteller, but this also owes something to the author's evident knowledge of his subject and acquaintance with the travails of the Bombay police force; one can feel the author has sweated and put in the hours for his reader. And beyond this, whole swathes of Indian society are put under the microscope. This is no set-piece version of sacred, historical India. What we have is an equally brutal and endearing, and invariably contradictory picture of a country in full transformation. Sacred Games ranges from the Bollywood scene to Bengali slums, from Naxalite battlegrounds to new-rich condominiums and from the Singhs' family farm in Maharashtra to the corridors of power in Delhi. It even manages to make the inevitable expository piece about the partition tragedy realistic and appealing.

The writing is elegant without - surprisingly for such a tome - being wordy, granting a large place to dialogue. It contains a number of English Indian words, but while this leaves the non-native curious, it isn't detrimental to his or her comprehension or enjoyment. I was warming up to my own imagined ending, to be disappointed that the author chose another direction. On reflection, though, Chandra's moralistic but not moralising denouement is much better than mine.


Of Sacred Games,'cops and robbers' and un'holy' men, 13 Mar 2008
It was a matter of pure coincidence that I bought this book-my decision had more to do with making avail the free postage facilities provided by one of the larger online presences when buying xmas presents, than an attempt to buy myself a fat little read.Little did I realise then that this little bit of indulgence to myself would provide me with unbridled satisfaction for a good few weeks.
Its almost 3 months since I cursed over the first page and about 3 pages down fell in love with it.Over the next 900 or so pages one is treated to the briefly intertwined but otherwise elaborately diverse lives of Sartaj Singh,a Mumbai police inspector and Ganesh Gaitonde the underworld Hindu don.Around this is woven the intricate politics of mumbai-between the mafia,the politicians and the various police departments.
But for me, the real allure of this book is 'mumbai' itself.Throughout this opus,Vikram Chandra describes the city people associate it with. The dust, the noise, grime and dirt,the scent of the sea[sometimes odour too] are all things that make his megapolis the city it is.To me ,sitting in my squeaky clean Cambridge apartment,this brings back memories of home,of gangster stories that we teenagers used to talk about in the classroom.

This is not a great literary classic, it is more of a paper Bollywood blockbuster.Vikram Chandra has written a novel about the real India, about its inhabitants that feature more in the crime sections of the news but neverthe-less have the lives so inherently linked to the Mumbai bloodline.And,it differs from the poncy diaspora novels that Indian literature is so full of. Hopefully, this novel marks the beginning of a new genre of english writing in India ,one which through the liberal use of the mixed vernacular can coexist with the more conservative form.


Hard Work, 27 Feb 2008
I have to say that reading this book is still a work in progress for me. I bought this book largely on the grounds of the synopsis and the rave reviews it had received, but I have to say that I think I am reading a different book. So far it has not given me any great insight into life in Mumbai or indeed into any of the characters within the book, combined with a story that moves at a snails pace it does make me wonder what I have actually been reading about.
One of the biggest frustrations for me is that there are entire pasages that are largely unintelligible due to the liberal use of colloquialisms and comments on the caste system. I don't even think that a glossary would help as I may well develop RSI from flicking to the back of the book to find out what the author is writing about.


Half-way house, 26 Jun 2008
Red Earth and Pouring Rain reads like the first shot of a great writer still finding his voice.

Chandra loosely intertwines two stories: one, set in India, an adventure tale in the style of old epics, and the other a modern American road story. The problem is that one infects the reading of the other; as in the mating of the mare with the donkey, the result is sterile. The earnestness of the fantastic old tale is lost. The Indian gods' appearance in a modern setting feels too much like Rushdie without the philosophy, the American road story like diaspora writing without a motive.

Perhaps Chandra didn't dare write only the epic, where one feels his real interest lay. Maybe his first submission wouldn't have been accepted by publishers without the homage to all that Indian-in-exile-on-a-US-campus stuff. And the book contains interesting writing on Anglo-Indian relations. But if, like me, you enjoyed Sacred Games and are looking for something else to read by the same author, you are better off waiting for his next novel.

Disappointing, 22 Mar 2005
Vikram Chandra's debut novel has received significant critical acclaim, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book, and a swag of favourable reviews on this website. Despite being interested in Indian culture and history, and being an avid reader of contemporary English language fiction set in South Asia, I regrettably found Chandra's 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' to be overall one of the most disappointing novels that I've ever read.

'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' is a novel of stories, and stories within stories, paying homage to the magic of storytelling. Stories are delivered to people - and gods in the Hindu pantheon - that come to assemble in the maidan. The most enjoyable sections of this novel are those revolving around developments in this village square as the storytelling unfolds, passages that Chandra intersperses throughout the work that function as transition markers between the sessions of story-telling: regrettably they account for a mere twenty-eight pages - a short story's worth of prose - in a massive tome of 618 pages.

Chandra's novel consists of two broad intertwined narratives glued together by the enjoyable transition scenes: a historical narrative spanning thousands of years of life on the sub-continent, and a contemporary story. The shorter of these, and by far the more enjoyable, is the contemporary story of Abhay, an Indian student returned from the United States. Abhay's adventures also illustrate the (generally negative) effects of the United States, and the West generally, on India's young elite, although perhaps Chandra is a touch heavy-handed in his portrayal of America's moral licentiousness, with two of a mere handful of characters including a female porn star that everybody appears to recognise, and a former centrefold whose allure for Abhay hasn't dimmed since he first set eyes on her in his Indian schooldays.

For the first two hundred pages or so, a confusing cast of characters are introduced and Chandra provides scant character development, little justification for the reader to take any interest in the events portrayed. Accordingly, Chandra fails to establish the essential compact between writer and reader that the words on the page are somehow more than mere words, and as a result my train of thought frequently drifted elsewhere. Primarily I persisted reading the novel on the strength of Abhay's tale and the scenes in the maidan - and a pigheaded resolve not to discard a book partly read! Granted the historical narrative becomes more cohesive with the arrival of brothers Sikander and Chotta, and half-sibling Sanjay - forgive me if this is not the correct familial relationship of the trio as even this is not without confusion - although I still did not identify with any character, and the remaining two-thirds of this lengthy work, with its liberal doses of magic realism, reads like a poor man's Rushdie.

Disappointing, 22 Mar 2005
Vikram Chandra's debut novel has received significant critical acclaim, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book, and a swag of favourable reviews on this website. Despite being interested in Indian culture and history, and being an avid reader of contemporary English language fiction set in South Asia, I regrettably found Chandra's 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' to be overall one of the most disappointing novels that I've ever read.

'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' is a novel of stories, and stories within stories, paying homage to the magic of storytelling. Stories are delivered to people - and gods in the Hindu pantheon - that come to assemble in the maidan. The most enjoyable sections of this novel are those revolving around developments in this village square as the storytelling unfolds, passages that Chandra intersperses throughout the work that function as transition markers between the sessions of story-telling: regrettably they account for a mere twenty-eight pages - a short story's worth of prose - in a massive tome of 618 pages.

Chandra's novel consists of two broad intertwined narratives glued together by the enjoyable transition scenes: a historical narrative spanning thousands of years of life on the sub-continent, and a contemporary story. The shorter of these, and by far the more enjoyable, is the contemporary story of Abhay, an Indian student returned from the United States. Abhay's adventures also illustrate the (generally negative) effects of the United States, and the West generally, on India's young elite, although perhaps Chandra is a touch heavy-handed in his portrayal of America's moral licentiousness, with two of a mere handful of characters including a female porn star that everybody appears to recognise, and a former centrefold whose allure for Abhay hasn't dimmed since he first set eyes on her in his Indian schooldays.

For the first two hundred pages or so, a confusing cast of characters are introduced and Chandra provides scant character development, little justification for the reader to take any interest in the events portrayed. Accordingly, Chandra fails to establish the essential compact between writer and reader that the words on the page are somehow more than mere words, and as a result my train of thought frequently drifted elsewhere. Primarily I persisted reading the novel on the strength of Abhay's tale and the scenes in the maidan - and a pigheaded resolve not to discard a book partly read! Granted the historical narrative becomes more cohesive with the arrival of brothers Sikander and Chotta, and half-sibling Sanjay - forgive me if this is not the correct familial relationship of the trio as even this is not without confusion - although I still did not identify with any character, and the remaining two-thirds of this lengthy work, with its liberal doses of magic realism, reads like a poor man's Rushdie.

A tale of splendour and desolation... narrated by a monkey ?, 01 Mar 2004
This massive, complex, multi-facetted book can be read in many ways: as a contemporary attempt to recapture the epic complexities of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; as a diatribe against the evils of colonialism (both the nineteenth-century British version and its new American counterpart); as an attack on the emptiness of modern capitalist consumerism... No doubt all true in their way, but for me the most astute comment on the book comes from Adam Thorpe (a man who knows a thing or two about storytelling himself): "telling a story - hundreds of them - becomes its own life-preserving act".

And what a story it is. Indian student Abhay, recently returned from the U.S.A., shoots a monkey which is stealing food. The badly wounded creature, rescued by his horrified relatives, announces that it contains the soul of the poet Sanjay: when Yama, God of the Dead, turns up (rapidly followed by several other minor cabinet ministers of the Hindu pantheon), Sanjay negotiates a stay of execution in exchange for his life story. (The obvious parallel here is with Sheherazade in "The Thousand and One Nights", and certainly Chandra's novel is very much "about" the power of narrative.) Sanjay tells us a tale that has it all: he has lived through most of the period of British colonialism, and spares us none of its horrors and injustices; but his tale also has love interest; epic battle scenes; a strong dash of magical realism, or even magical surrealism (twins are born miraculously after the consumption of sticky buns; Sanjay becomes a creature of the Undead to pursue fellow immortal Jack the Ripper through the streets of Victorian London); and perhaps most remarkably, recurrent scenes of emotional desolation on an epic scale (it's a difficult mood to describe, but no-one does it as well as Chandra: the same mood recurs in his collection of linked novellas, "Love and Longing in Bombay"). Intercut with Sanjay's tale, and drawing ironic parallels between British and American imperialism, is Abhay's own narrative of his experiences as a student in America: this has its own scenes of epic emotional desolation.

A strange, beautiful and unique book; and the best story (indeed, hundreds of them) I've read for a long time.

Symbols of resistance, 03 Jan 2004
Red Earth and Pouring Rain is a remarkable novel. The author has spun a web of intriguing stories, exploring the impact of British colonialism on India and the Indian people.
With an overwhelming and often humorous use of symbolism, Chandra deals with events and issues that have shaped India with devastating consequences. Independence, partition and today's communal violence are all located in the social antagonisms unleashed by colonisation.
At its heart, Red Earth and Pouring Rain conveys the torment of being robbed of a cultural identity. The novel's many characters all struggle with a sense of being a stranger in a foreign land-a theme that Chandra explores using both Indian and European characters.
Out of these struggles for personal identity there come stories of resistance to colonial rule-from a Calcutta printer, who secretes hidden subversive messages in the books he prints, to the hero of the book who leads an armed mutiny against the British.
Few books, fiction or non-fiction, have got me thinking so much about India and the affects of British colonialism. The parallels for the new century couldn't be any closer.

A book that has so much to say, 18 Aug 2003
Please ignore the person who labelled this novel as 'dire and dissapointing'. To say that the stories lacked purpose is to misunderstand the layers that the series of stories represents. I was introduced to this novel during my english degree, on a module examining Indian writing this was the novel that really struck me. The examination of the encounter between modernity and tradition in Bombay creates a haunting underworld in the novel, a semi-mythological Indian past that lurks within the shadows, and haunts the disembodied old houses that are trapped between scaling apartment blocks. It is a brilliantly haunting novel - in particular the story of Sartaj the detective who is trapped between the underworld and the real world, ending up isolated from both. Read it, you will not be dissapointed.

I loved this book and have re-read it several times!, 23 Nov 2000
The stories in this collection are very different, each totally absorbing in its own way. I've been to Bombay a few times and this book took me back there. The love and longing expressed in the stories about Sartaj the policeman and Iqbal the programmer still haunt me. After reading the comments from Glasgow I'll have to give 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' another try - if, like me, you couldn't get into it don't let it put you off 'Love and Longing...'

A craftsman at work ..., 24 Feb 2000
Chandra is a master of language: his imagery is so vivid and fresh that scenes and characters bounce from the page, his use of words so dazzling I often found myself reading paragraphs over and over, completely blown away with the author's skill. And not a single battered to death cliché to be found. The stories too were subtle and enchanting, gently weaving in and out of plots and sub-plots. For anyone who appreciates a real craftsman of words, 'Love And Longing In Bombay' cannot fail to please. I can't think of more than half a dozen other books I'd give five stars to.

Dire and disappointing, 16 Jan 2000
This collection of short stories is really dire, and a real disappointment from an author who charmed me with his "Red Earth and Pouring Rain". Many of the tales do not really have a point. This would not matter if there was more of a sense of place - after all this book is called love and longing in BOMBAY. Many of the stories were self-indulgent, many self-conscious and frankly not one of these stories measures upto this author's previous work.

Cracking book , 04 Sep 2008
Thoroughly enjoyable - stories weave in and out of one another, the excellent use of language allows the story to rattle along, and loose ends are tied up. Ten on ten.

Is this the real india?, 23 May 2008
I began this novel with high expectations--I relish long novels--Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Dostoevky, Tolstoy, Vikram Seth come to mind--and indeed, I found it from the start riveting. Life in Mumbai, Sartaj the cop, even Gatoinde, the anti-hero--all came alive. But in the end I fear I lost interest, mainly because, I think, I was not made to care enough about the main characters. Indeed, most of the women seem very cardboard characters without much reality about them. And although some people seem to have found the non-translation of Indian words, (and Indian songs) OK, I found it irritating, and very unhelpful. And I confess that I found the whole working up of the [atomic]bomb episode (climax?)so bizarre as to be almost laughable.
Chandra is a good writer, with the ability to crank up the excitement, and with touches of detail that are striking and imaginative, and though I found Gatoinde unbelievable, I felt a lot of empathy and liking for Sartaj. But all the while, I was asking, Is this what modern India is really like? Are the police this corrupt and bad? Is crime and gang warfare this prevalent? Are there so many aspiring film stars ready to be corrupted and seduced as Chandra portrays? Is India really like this?
But in the end, this is not the "great Indian novel" that some reviewers seem to have discovered.

Thriller and social study in one, 30 Apr 2008
Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games combines the attractions of genre literature with a meticulous social portrayal of that most fascinating of countries: modern India.

The novel's chosen format is that of a detective story, with ex-playboy, philosophically inclined Sikh police inspector Sartaj Singh chasing the tail of Bombay's most notorious gangster boss. We are also given the gory and satisfyingly prurient tale of the gangster's rise to chiefdom. But it is best never to betray too much of a thriller's plot. Suffice it to mention that the storyline takes on nationally and even internationally threatening dimensions, as well as going through the Bombay mob and the police's more modest, everyday battles.

The pace never flags through the book's massive 900 pages. No doubt Chandra is a capital storyteller, but this also owes something to the author's evident knowledge of his subject and acquaintance with the travails of the Bombay police force; one can feel the author has sweated and put in the hours for his reader. And beyond this, whole swathes of Indian society are put under the microscope. This is no set-piece version of sacred, historical India. What we have is an equally brutal and endearing, and invariably contradictory picture of a country in full transformation. Sacred Games ranges from the Bollywood scene to Bengali slums, from Naxalite battlegrounds to new-rich condominiums and from the Singhs' family farm in Maharashtra to the corridors of power in Delhi. It even manages to make the inevitable expository piece about the partition tragedy realistic and appealing.

The writing is elegant without - surprisingly for such a tome - being wordy, granting a large place to dialogue. It contains a number of English Indian words, but while this leaves the non-native curious, it isn't detrimental to his or her comprehension or enjoyment. I was warming up to my own imagined ending, to be disappointed that the author chose another direction. On reflection, though, Chandra's moralistic but not moralising denouement is much better than mine.


Of Sacred Games,'cops and robbers' and un'holy' men, 13 Mar 2008
It was a matter of pure coincidence that I bought this book-my decision had more to do with making avail the free postage facilities provided by one of the larger online presences when buying xmas presents, than an attempt to buy myself a fat little read.Little did I realise then that this little bit of indulgence to myself would provide me with unbridled satisfaction for a good few weeks.
Its almost 3 months since I cursed over the first page and about 3 pages down fell in love with it.Over the next 900 or so pages one is treated to the briefly intertwined but otherwise elaborately diverse lives of Sartaj Singh,a Mumbai police inspector and Ganesh Gaitonde the underworld Hindu don.Around this is woven the intricate politics of mumbai-between the mafia,the politicians and the various police departments.
But for me, the real allure of this book is 'mumbai' itself.Throughout this opus,Vikram Chandra describes the city people associate it with. The dust, the noise, grime and dirt,the scent of the sea[sometimes odour too] are all things that make his megapolis the city it is.To me ,sitting in my squeaky clean Cambridge apartment,this brings back memories of home,of gangster stories that we teenagers used to talk about in the classroom.

This is not a great literary classic, it is more of a paper Bollywood blockbuster.Vikram Chandra has written a novel about the real India, about its inhabitants that feature more in the crime sections of the news but neverthe-less have the lives so inherently linked to the Mumbai bloodline.And,it differs from the poncy diaspora novels that Indian literature is so full of. Hopefully, this novel marks the beginning of a new genre of english writing in India ,one which through the liberal use of the mixed vernacular can coexist with the more conservative form.


Hard Work, 27 Feb 2008
I have to say that reading this book is still a work in progress for me. I bought this book largely on the grounds of the synopsis and the rave reviews it had received, but I have to say that I think I am reading a different book. So far it has not given me any great insight into life in Mumbai or indeed into any of the characters within the book, combined with a story that moves at a snails pace it does make me wonder what I have actually been reading about.
One of the biggest frustrations for me is that there are entire pasages that are largely unintelligible due to the liberal use of colloquialisms and comments on the caste system. I don't even think that a glossary would help as I may well develop RSI from flicking to the back of the book to find out what the author is writing about.


Half-way house, 26 Jun 2008
Red Earth and Pouring Rain reads like the first shot of a great writer still finding his voice.

Chandra loosely intertwines two stories: one, set in India, an adventure tale in the style of old epics, and the other a modern American road story. The problem is that one infects the reading of the other; as in the mating of the mare with the donkey, the result is sterile. The earnestness of the fantastic old tale is lost. The Indian gods' appearance in a modern setting feels too much like Rushdie without the philosophy, the American road story like diaspora writing without a motive.

Perhaps Chandra didn't dare write only the epic, where one feels his real interest lay. Maybe his first submission wouldn't have been accepted by publishers without the homage to all that Indian-in-exile-on-a-US-campus stuff. And the book contains interesting writing on Anglo-Indian relations. But if, like me, you enjoyed Sacred Games and are looking for something else to read by the same author, you are better off waiting for his next novel.

Disappointing, 22 Mar 2005
Vikram Chandra's debut novel has received significant critical acclaim, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book, and a swag of favourable reviews on this website. Despite being interested in Indian culture and history, and being an avid reader of contemporary English language fiction set in South Asia, I regrettably found Chandra's 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' to be overall one of the most disappointing novels that I've ever read.

'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' is a novel of stories, and stories within stories, paying homage to the magic of storytelling. Stories are delivered to people - and gods in the Hindu pantheon - that come to assemble in the maidan. The most enjoyable sections of this novel are those revolving around developments in this village square as the storytelling unfolds, passages that Chandra intersperses throughout the work that function as transition markers between the sessions of story-telling: regrettably they account for a mere twenty-eight pages - a short story's worth of prose - in a massive tome of 618 pages.

Chandra's novel consists of two broad intertwined narratives glued together by the enjoyable transition scenes: a historical narrative spanning thousands of years of life on the sub-continent, and a contemporary story. The shorter of these, and by far the more enjoyable, is the contemporary story of Abhay, an Indian student returned from the United States. Abhay's adventures also illustrate the (generally negative) effects of the United States, and the West generally, on India's young elite, although perhaps Chandra is a touch heavy-handed in his portrayal of America's moral licentiousness, with two of a mere handful of characters including a female porn star that everybody appears to recognise, and a former centrefold whose allure for Abhay hasn't dimmed since he first set eyes on her in his Indian schooldays.

For the first two hundred pages or so, a confusing cast of characters are introduced and Chandra provides scant character development, little justification for the reader to take any interest in the events portrayed. Accordingly, Chandra fails to establish the essential compact between writer and reader that the words on the page are somehow more than mere words, and as a result my train of thought frequently drifted elsewhere. Primarily I persisted reading the novel on the strength of Abhay's tale and the scenes in the maidan - and a pigheaded resolve not to discard a book partly read! Granted the historical narrative becomes more cohesive with the arrival of brothers Sikander and Chotta, and half-sibling Sanjay - forgive me if this is not the correct familial relationship of the trio as even this is not without confusion - although I still did not identify with any character, and the remaining two-thirds of this lengthy work, with its liberal doses of magic realism, reads like a poor man's Rushdie.

Disappointing, 22 Mar 2005
Vikram Chandra's debut novel has received significant critical acclaim, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book, and a swag of favourable reviews on this website. Despite being interested in Indian culture and history, and being an avid reader of contemporary English language fiction set in South Asia, I regrettably found Chandra's 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' to be overall one of the most disappointing novels that I've ever read.

'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' is a novel of stories, and stories within stories, paying homage to the magic of storytelling. Stories are delivered to people - and gods in the Hindu pantheon - that come to assemble in the maidan. The most enjoyable sections of this novel are those revolving around developments in this village square as the storytelling unfolds, passages that Chandra intersperses throughout the work that function as transition markers between the sessions of story-telling: regrettably they account for a mere twenty-eight pages - a short story's worth of prose - in a massive tome of 618 pages.

Chandra's novel consists of two broad intertwined narratives glued together by the enjoyable transition scenes: a historical narrative spanning thousands of years of life on the sub-continent, and a contemporary story. The shorter of these, and by far the more enjoyable, is the contemporary story of Abhay, an Indian student returned from the United States. Abhay's adventures also illustrate the (generally negative) effects of the United States, and the West generally, on India's young elite, although perhaps Chandra is a touch heavy-handed in his portrayal of America's moral licentiousness, with two of a mere handful of characters including a female porn star that everybody appears to recognise, and a former centrefold whose allure for Abhay hasn't dimmed since he first set eyes on her in his Indian schooldays.

For the first two hundred pages or so, a confusing cast of characters are introduced and Chandra provides scant character development, little justification for the reader to take any interest in the events portrayed. Accordingly, Chandra fails to establish the essential compact between writer and reader that the words on the page are somehow more than mere words, and as a result my train of thought frequently drifted elsewhere. Primarily I persisted reading the novel on the strength of Abhay's tale and the scenes in the maidan - and a pigheaded resolve not to discard a book partly read! Granted the historical narrative becomes more cohesive with the arrival of brothers Sikander and Chotta, and half-sibling Sanjay - forgive me if this is not the correct familial relationship of the trio as even this is not without confusion - although I still did not identify with any character, and the remaining two-thirds of this lengthy work, with its liberal doses of magic realism, reads like a poor man's Rushdie.

A tale of splendour and desolation... narrated by a monkey ?, 01 Mar 2004
This massive, complex, multi-facetted book can be read in many ways: as a contemporary attempt to recapture the epic complexities of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; as a diatribe against the evils of colonialism (both the nineteenth-century British version and its new American counterpart); as an attack on the emptiness of modern capitalist consumerism... No doubt all true in their way, but for me the most astute comment on the book comes from Adam Thorpe (a man who knows a thing or two about storytelling himself): "telling a story - hundreds of them - becomes its own life-preserving act".

And what a story it is. Indian student Abhay, recently returned from the U.S.A., shoots a monkey which is stealing food. The badly wounded creature, rescued by his horrified relatives, announces that it contains the soul of the poet Sanjay: when Yama, God of the Dead, turns up (rapidly followed by several other minor cabinet ministers of the Hindu pantheon), Sanjay negotiates a stay of execution in exchange for his life story. (The obvious parallel here is with Sheherazade in "The Thousand and One Nights", and certainly Chandra's novel is very much "about" the power of narrative.) Sanjay tells us a tale that has it all: he has lived through most of the period of British colonialism, and spares us none of its horrors and injustices; but his tale also has love interest; epic battle scenes; a strong dash of magical realism, or even magical surrealism (twins are born miraculously after the consumption of sticky buns; Sanjay becomes a creature of the Undead to pursue fellow immortal Jack the Ripper through the streets of Victorian London); and perhaps most remarkably, recurrent scenes of emotional desolation on an epic scale (it's a difficult mood to describe, but no-one does it as well as Chandra: the same mood recurs in his collection of linked novellas, "Love and Longing in Bombay"). Intercut with Sanjay's tale, and drawing ironic parallels between British and American imperialism, is Abhay's own narrative of his experiences as a student in America: this has its own scenes of epic emotional desolation.

A strange, beautiful and unique book; and the best story (indeed, hundreds of them) I've read for a long time.

Symbols of resistance, 03 Jan 2004
Red Earth and Pouring Rain is a remarkable novel. The author has spun a web of intriguing stories, exploring the impact of British colonialism on India and the Indian people.
With an overwhelming and often humorous use of symbolism, Chandra deals with events and issues that have shaped India with devastating consequences. Independence, partition and today's communal violence are all located in the social antagonisms unleashed by colonisation.
At its heart, Red Earth and Pouring Rain conveys the torment of being robbed of a cultural identity. The novel's many characters all struggle with a sense of being a stranger in a foreign land-a theme that Chandra explores using both Indian and European characters.
Out of these struggles for personal identity there come stories of resistance to colonial rule-from a Calcutta printer, who secretes hidden subversive messages in the books he prints, to the hero of the book who leads an armed mutiny against the British.
Few books, fiction or non-fiction, have got me thinking so much about India and the affects of British colonialism. The parallels for the new century couldn't be any closer.

A book that has so much to say, 18 Aug 2003
Please ignore the person who labelled this novel as 'dire and dissapointing'. To say that the stories lacked purpose is to misunderstand the layers that the series of stories represents. I was introduced to this novel during my english degree, on a module examining Indian writing this was the novel that really struck me. The examination of the encounter between modernity and tradition in Bombay creates a haunting underworld in the novel, a semi-mythological Indian past that lurks within the shadows, and haunts the disembodied old houses that are trapped between scaling apartment blocks. It is a brilliantly haunting novel - in particular the story of Sartaj the detective who is trapped between the underworld and the real world, ending up isolated from both. Read it, you will not be dissapointed.

I loved this book and have re-read it several times!, 23 Nov 2000
The stories in this collection are very different, each totally absorbing in its own way. I've been to Bombay a few times and this book took me back there. The love and longing expressed in the stories about Sartaj the policeman and Iqbal the programmer still haunt me. After reading the comments from Glasgow I'll have to give 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' another try - if, like me, you couldn't get into it don't let it put you off 'Love and Longing...'

A craftsman at work ..., 24 Feb 2000
Chandra is a master of language: his imagery is so vivid and fresh that scenes and characters bounce from the page, his use of words so dazzling I often found myself reading paragraphs over and over, completely blown away with the author's skill. And not a single battered to death cliché to be found. The stories too were subtle and enchanting, gently weaving in and out of plots and sub-plots. For anyone who appreciates a real craftsman of words, 'Love And Longing In Bombay' cannot fail to please. I can't think of more than half a dozen other books I'd give five stars to.

Dire and disappointing, 16 Jan 2000
This collection of short stories is really dire, and a real disappointment from an author who charmed me with his "Red Earth and Pouring Rain". Many of the tales do not really have a point. This would not matter if there was more of a sense of place - after all this book is called love and longing in BOMBAY. Many of the stories were self-indulgent, many self-conscious and frankly not one of these stories measures upto this author's previous work.

Cracking book , 04 Sep 2008
Thoroughly enjoyable - stories weave in and out of one another, the excellent use of language allows the story to rattle along, and loose ends are tied up. Ten on ten.

Is this the real india?, 23 May 2008
I began this novel with high expectations--I relish long novels--Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Dostoevky, Tolstoy, Vikram Seth come to mind--and indeed, I found it from the start riveting. Life in Mumbai, Sartaj the cop, even Gatoinde, the anti-hero--all came alive. But in the end I fear I lost interest, mainly because, I think, I was not made to care enough about the main characters. Indeed, most of the women seem very cardboard characters without much reality about them. And although some people seem to have found the non-translation of Indian words, (and Indian songs) OK, I found it irritating, and very unhelpful. And I confess that I found the whole working up of the [atomic]bomb episode (climax?)so bizarre as to be almost laughable.
Chandra is a good writer, with the ability to crank up the excitement, and with touches of detail that are striking and imaginative, and though I found Gatoinde unbelievable, I felt a lot of empathy and liking for Sartaj. But all the while, I was asking, Is this what modern India is really like? Are the police this corrupt and bad? Is crime and gang warfare this prevalent? Are there so many aspiring film stars ready to be corrupted and seduced as Chandra portrays? Is India really like this?
But in the end, this is not the "great Indian novel" that some reviewers seem to have discovered.

Thriller and social study in one, 30 Apr 2008
Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games combines the attractions of genre literature with a meticulous social portrayal of that most fascinating of countries: modern India.

The novel's chosen format is that of a detective story, with ex-playboy, philosophically inclined Sikh police inspector Sartaj Singh chasing the tail of Bombay's most notorious gangster boss. We are also given the gory and satisfyingly prurient tale of the gangster's rise to chiefdom. But it is best never to betray too much of a thriller's plot. Suffice it to mention that the storyline takes on nationally and even internationally threatening dimensions, as well as going through the Bombay mob and the police's more modest, everyday battles.

The pace never flags through the book's massive 900 pages. No doubt Chandra is a capital storyteller, but this also owes something to the author's evident knowledge of his subject and acquaintance with the travails of the Bombay police force; one can feel the author has sweated and put in the hours for his reader. And beyond this, whole swathes of Indian society are put under the microscope. This is no set-piece version of sacred, historical India. What we have is an equally brutal and endearing, and invariably contradictory picture of a country in full transformation. Sacred Games ranges from the Bollywood scene to Bengali slums, from Naxalite battlegrounds to new-rich condominiums and from the Singhs' family farm in Maharashtra to the corridors of power in Delhi. It even manages to make the inevitable expository piece about the partition tragedy realistic and appealing.

The writing is elegant without - surprisingly for such a tome - being wordy, granting a large place to dialogue. It contains a number of English Indian words, but while this leaves the non-native curious, it isn't detrimental to his or her comprehension or enjoyment. I was warming up to my own imagined ending, to be disappointed that the author chose another direction. On reflection, though, Chandra's moralistic but not moralising denouement is much better than mine.


Of Sacred Games,'cops and robbers' and un'holy' men, 13 Mar 2008
It was a matter of pure coincidence that I bought this book-my decision had more to do with making avail the free postage facilities provided by one of the larger online presences when buying xmas presents, than an attempt to buy myself a fat little read.Little did I realise then that this little bit of indulgence to myself would provide me with unbridled satisfaction for a good few weeks.
Its almost 3 months since I cursed over the first page and about 3 pages down fell in love with it.Over the next 900 or so pages one is treated to the briefly intertwined but otherwise elaborately diverse lives of Sartaj Singh,a Mumbai police inspector and Ganesh Gaitonde the underworld Hindu don.Around this is woven the intricate politics of mumbai-between the mafia,the politicians and the various police departments.
But for me, the real allure of this book is 'mumbai' itself.Throughout this opus,Vikram Chandra describes the city people associate it with. The dust, the noise, grime and dirt,the scent of the sea[sometimes odour too] are all things that make his megapolis the city it is.To me ,sitting in my squeaky clean Cambridge apartment,this brings back memories of home,of gangster stories that we teenagers used to talk about in the classroom.

This is not a great literary classic, it is more of a paper Bollywood blockbuster.Vikram Chandra has written a novel about the real India, about its inhabitants that feature more in the crime sections of the news but neverthe-less have the lives so inherently linked to the Mumbai bloodline.And,it differs from the poncy diaspora novels that Indian literature is so full of. Hopefully, this novel marks the beginning of a new genre of english writing in India ,one which through the liberal use of the mixed vernacular can coexist with the more conservative form.


Hard Work, 27 Feb 2008
I have to say that reading this book is still a work in progress for me. I bought this book largely on the grounds of the synopsis and the rave reviews it had received, but I have to say that I think I am reading a different book. So far it has not given me any great insight into life in Mumbai or indeed into any of the characters within the book, combined with a story that moves at a snails pace it does make me wonder what I have actually been reading about.
One of the biggest frustrations for me is that there are entire pasages that are largely unintelligible due to the liberal use of colloquialisms and comments on the caste system. I don't even think that a glossary would help as I may well develop RSI from flicking to the back of the book to find out what the author is writing about.