Featured Company:

Sacred Games: A Novel (P.S.)

Today's shopping tips: "Be wise in purchasing ..... find best value one"

---

Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $3.98
You Save: $ 12.97 ( 77% )
(prices subject to change)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Average Ratings:

A policeman, a criminal overlord, a Bollywood film star, beggars, cultists, spies, and terrorists—the lives of the privileged, the famous, the wretched, and the bloodthirsty interweave with cataclysmic consequences amid the chaos of modern-day Mumbai, in this soaring, uncompromising, and unforgettable epic masterwork of literary art.

DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061130366
ISBN: 0061130362
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 992
Publication Date: 2007-12-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: 2007-12-18
Studio: Harper Perennial


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories
• Shantaram: A Novel
• The Savage Detectives: A Novel


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: The most amazing crime novel this decade
Comment: Vikram Chandra has written a book that instantly captivates you. It draws you into a world you did not know existed and then explains every facet of it. The heat and dust and food flavors of Bombay (or Mumbai) come alive in a vivid and compelling narrative. The book has two major characters, a weary police inspector and the crime lord who he pursues. I have read the book three times over the last two years and keep finding new pleasures in it. Vikram Chandra is a genius. His writing has Dickensian detail and heft, and yet moves as fast as any contemporary thriller.


Customer Rating:
Summary: not a problem with the vender
Comment:
The book is fine - no problems. Unfortunately it was sent by UPS, and I never got it. I had to complain to Amazon, and they sent me (very promptly) a second copy. A week later, I got notice that the first copy was returned as "undeliverable". We were here the whole time. USPS, in our experience, is much more reliable.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Garbled Games
Comment: As an American who enjoys Bollywood movies, and who is studying Hindi as a hobby, I delved enthusiastically into this book. I am a relative initiate into Indian culture who has never been to India, so the book did indeed have some exotic charm. Even for me however, the overwhelming amount of Hindi in the book (*most* of which is *not* in the glossary) was very distracting. Some of the writing is beautiful and startling, but, as has been noted, it is very uneven.

My main problems with this book are as follows. Editing might have helped.

1) The plot is too rambling and disjointed. The insets are interesting on their own but do not significantly contribute to an understanding of the characters. The resolution of the various plotlines is anticlimactic.

2) The characters are uneven too. Gaitonde (the gangster) is probably the best drawn, the Guru the least. I liked Sartaj and believed most of the characters, but something left me very empty at the end. That emptiness is my most lasting impression. For all the lush action and intrigue, there is something ultimately cynical and purposeless in this book's tone.

What I liked best were the stories within stories. As a group they don't have a lot of cohesion though. The Canterbury Tales this ain't.

I heard Vikram Chandra talk about this book and he spoke mostly about the inspiration of following Bombay gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim. When I approached him and asked about the overwhelming amount of foreign language in the book, he said that it was Hindi (and not Marathi) and that whatever I couldn't find in the back of the book could be found on his website's online glossary. I enjoyed parts of the experience of reading this book, but I don't think I'll be reading any more of Chandra's books soon.



Customer Rating:
Summary: Like being taken to a trip
Comment: Never being to India. Parents were, long ago, and were shocked and awed - as expected.

This books takes you to India. For example, it (at least the Hebrew version I'm reading) is full of Indian words spread around, with a dictionary at the end of the book, and I find myself constantly paging there looking for translations. This is fun.

The question is - is this the real India? I have no tools to judge. However, the book's India is enchanting.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Facts and Fictions of Modern Mumbai
Comment: Much has already been written on Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games", so my review will not deal with the plot but only underline some aspects of the book and why it is so enjoyable and appealing. V.Chandra, who descends from a family that is part of Mumbai's intellectual Gotha (mother screen writer for Bollywood films, sister journalist of Bollywood film world, brother in law Bollywood director) wrote this book in English with abundant untranslated Hindi words and references, with the intention of communicating to the western readers the nature of his country, its stories and its modern day reality through the description of two important systems, the Indian police force and the Indian criminal underworld. Through over 900 pages almost every modern aspect and character of the most modern and international city of India, Mumbai, comes to life and extends its arms towards us. A detailed sociological analysis consents the interpretation of this upcoming and outgoing country. Fortunately, V.Chandra even in the attempt to communicate Indian reality stays inside its boundaries, differently from what recently has happened with Danny Boyle' "Slumdog millionaire", that with its Oscar winning story has given a fairytale and unrealistic reading of modern Indian society. Remember also the success of "Shantaram" that is in great part based on an outsider's reading of the Mumbai reality.
If you have the time and the curiosity, look up the movies and the songs mentioned in the book, from Ram Gopal Varma's "Satya" and "Company" to filmi lyrics from old Hindi movies, as to really get the feel of popular Indian culture today and surrender to the shear beauty with which Hindustani read their complex reality.
And also, if you want to better understand the impact and importance of the Indian criminal underworld read the companion book to this novel, Sukethu Metha's non fiction "Maximun City".

Now a brief immersion into the joy and entertainment this novel can give, which is similar to Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy". Stories are built on stories, every character has a world of his or her own, that comes from the past and goes into the future. Not one is abandoned along the way. When the book is finished you feel as though you lost some friends and going home you don't have anything to look forward to.
Another brief digression into the psychology of the characters. Each one has the same fear, of not being able to understand the surrounding reality and the people he deals with. The archi-criminal Gainesh wants a leader because he can't resign himself to his brutal existence and gives up when his leader dumps him, the honest/dishonest policeman Sartaj Singh is terrorized of not understanding what is going on until he finds his reason of being in a simple and loving woman and in his own moral solidity even if it implies his chief's treason.
A beautiful realistic contemporary fiction. Read and enjoy.

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server, using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.
| Blocks | Building Sets | Model Toys | Puzzles | Figures & Playsets | Toys by Age Ranges |