Product Description

A tale of 19th-century India: of Sanjay, a poet, and Sikander, a warrior; of great wars and love affairs and a city gone "mad with poetry". Woven into this tapestry of stories is a second, modern narrative - the adventures of a young Indian criss-crossing America in a car with his friends.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160208 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 617 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Setting 18th- and 19th-century Mogul India against the open highways of contemporary America and fusing Indian myth, Hindu gods, magic and mundane reality, this intricate first novel is a magnificent epic that welds the exfoliating storytelling style of A Thousand and One Nights to modernist fictional technique. Abhay, an Indian college student studying in the U.S. but home on vacation in Bombay, shoots a scavenging monkey; the dying creature reveals itself to be the reincarnation of Sanjay Parasher, a fiery, iconoclastic 19th-century poet and freedom-fighter against British rule. To remain alive, the monkey strikes a deal with the gods: he must keep Abhay's family entertained each day by telling stories of his former lives. Around this fanciful premise, Indian novelist Chandra has built a powerful, moving saga that explores colonialism, death and suffering, ephemeral pleasure and the search for the meaning of life. Through the monkey's tales, we learn of Sanjay's lethal estrangement from his best friend, Sikander, an Anglo-Indian warrior who serves the British; of the suicide of Sikander's mother, Janvi, who throws herself on a funeral pyre after her English husband gives away their daughters to missionaries; of Sanjay's avenging showdown in London with Dr. Paul Sarthey, renowned orientalist and murderous imperialist. Abhay also narrates his own sprawling tale about his drive across the U.S. with two alienated fellow students, providing a dramatic contrast between America's throwaway pop culture and India's ancient, venerated ways, bound up with the concepts of dharma (right conduct), karma and reincarnation. This is an astonishing and brilliant debut.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this debut, an example of magical realism with an Asian American twist, a monkey shot by a young man in Bombay turns out to be the latest reincarnation of a 17th-century poet and adventurer. The gods promise to spare the monkey's life if he tells a story, and his stirring tale of warriors and poets blends with the young man's account of three college students making their way across America.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
This is an ambitiously complex first novel about mythmaking and our hunger for stories. It's also an epic, embracing impressionistic interpretations of the history of India as well as a contemporary road trip across America. Abhay, home in India after attending college in California, is the link between these worlds. Restless and alienated, he shoots and seriously wounds a pesky monkey, then gets quite a shock when he discovers that the creature has the heart and mind of a poet named Sanjay, an old soul who has eluded death many times. A triumvirate of deities arrive on the scene, and a bargain is struck: Sanjay will stay alive only if he can entertain an audience with his stories. And so Sanjay becomes a Scheherazade and Chandra's novel an Indian One Thousand and One Nights. Sanjay's colorful tales are steeped in the passions and fears aroused by love, war, and the quest for wisdom. When he grows weary, Abhay takes up the thread. As each story leads to another, Chandra's multifaceted narrative spins and whirls as hectically and alluringly as a kaleidoscope, leaving us a bit dazed if impressed. Donna Seaman

Customer Reviews

I ought to have enjoyed it more than I did
You won't read a bad review of this book anywhere. Many will claim it is a work of greatness, other will use the word 'genius'. Most will tell you that the charm of the book comes from the characterisation, the vivid images of India (and Indian culture) and the warmth of the narrative.

All true.

I have only one gripe: I'm not the fastest reader in the world, and as such I tended to read this book in small chunks, day to day. The trouble is that this book is composed of un uncountable number of seemingly unconnected stories, sometimes nested one inside another. No sooner have you met one character and situation than the author introduces another. And another. And another.
By half way through the book I was persistently looking back through the pages to remember who characters were and their significance to the story. Some characters also seemed to change names part-way through the book, which didn't help.

Another upshot of this writing style is that by half way through the book the reader (ie. me) hasn't yet come to grips with the overall plot, or direction, that the novel is taking. Any other book you read, you get yourself immersed in the story and by halfway you're starting to guess how things might work out. With this book you spend the first 300 pages digesting dozens and dozens of seemingly unconnected episodes involving disparite characters, and you never really get into the 'flow', making it difficult to care about what's going to happen next. I had to really force myself to carry on at one point.

By the time you've reached the last third of the book these 'episodes' are beginning to merge into a single narrative, which helps enormously.

Overall impression then? Oddly disjointed, sometimes frustratingly episodic (in the first half), but in the end a rich and satisying read.

On Being Enchanted
I am your basic omnivorous reader. I delight in stories of almost any kind (certain genres excluded) that are well-told. I make my living in the creative arts and so honor imagination wherever I find it.

Two weeks ago, while at the library, I searched the fiction shelves looking for treasure. As usual, I started at the top of the alphabetical arrangement of authors methodically pulling out titles and reading flyleaves. (I hope this technique will afford me a chance to read all of the great works of fiction. So far I haven't managed to get past the "C's" and I've been doing this for over 15 years.)

Chandra's book seemed to leap into my hands. I felt as if I should hug it or cradle it or in some other way protect it lest some other reader's psychic need draw it from my grasp into theirs. Without even reading the flyleaf I was certain I had found a book of serious magic.

As I will, I found two other books as safeguards against the possibility that I wouldn't enjoy Red Earth and Pouring Rain. I could have saved the effort.

For two weeks now I have devoured the book. I read excerpts to everyone I can tie down. I laugh out load if not at some humorous segment then simply in outright delight. I cry as I identify with the sorrows Chandra so perfectly portrays.

This is a steller work. Vikram Chandra has here worked a piece of art in mixed media. It is both realism and abstraction. It is infinitesimally jewel-like and thunderously monumental.

I am a 62 year old male. I have been feeling my age of late. September 11th sorrowed me for my country and my feelings for all humanity. Two things have restored my hope: the 2002 Winter Olympics and Vikram Chandra's wonderful gift.

GREAT BOOK!!
What's not to like? An historical warrior romance and a road trip with reincarnation and a sentient beastie holding the great god death at bay!! A big windswept novel to curl up in with lots of little paths and byways to meander into. I liked the slipping between "cultures" and historic times. I found a strength there not present in straight forward narratives. Maybe it's generational thing, the channel surfers versus those who watch TV programs from start to end, but to my mind this novel had more "reality" in it due to the switching from one voice to a different one. I found the sense of tropics was as strong and alive and present as the slightly dislocated U.S. highway. Hey, the jet is a time machine and modern life happens in lots of realities simultaneously.