Book Reviews

BETWEEN THE ASSASSINATIONS

The Cinema of an American Outsider

Aravind Adiga

After his success in winning the Man Booker prize last year for The White Tiger, Indian author Aravind Adiga has paused for breathing space before his next novel by producing this collection of short stories, set in the Eighties (between the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi), about the inhabitants of the fictional Indian seaside town of Kittur.

As with his previous book, Adiga is not concerned with painting pretty pictures of modern India. Kittur is a 'violent, rotten, garbage-strewn port, crawling with pickpockets and knife-carrying thugs.' His characters are, in the main, innocents corrupted by their circumstances. Ziauddin, a young Muslim, is dragged into a terrorist plan to attack the railway station. Lonely Jayamma says her job as a cook is to 'fatten other people's children.'

Yet for all the hard existence that is portrayed, there is magic in the descriptive narrative as the author fastens on to minor details with an observant eye and wit to make his larger point - that in any situation there is hope.

Atlantic Books, 14.99 pounds