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A Sin of Color
Debendranath Roy, presumed dead, leaves behind a pale, languishing wife and a mystery that takes 20 years to unfold. His hidden passion for his brother's wife, his own wife's unrequited love and his niece's obsession to uncover the truth create the beauty, power and tension of this story.
A Sin of Color tells the story of three generations, and of a house in Calcutta called Mandalay. It is to Mandalay that Debendranath's father brings his young bride after their wedding. And it is to Mandalay that Debendranath's older brother brings his own wife, the woman with whom Debendranath falls in love. Fleeing the house, his family and his ill-fated love for a married woman, Debendranath leaves for England. But he cannot escape his passion-and years later, neither can his niece, Niharika, a beautiful and talented writer.
A Sin of Color tells the story of three generations, and of a house in Calcutta called Mandalay. It is to Mandalay that Debendranath's father brings his young bride after their wedding. And it is to Mandalay that Debendranath's older brother brings his own wife, the woman with whom Debendranath falls in love. Fleeing the house, his family and his ill-fated love for a married woman, Debendranath leaves for England. But he cannot escape his passion-and years later, neither can his niece, Niharika, a beautiful and talented writer.
279 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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115 people want to read
About the author
Sunetra Gupta
10 books22 followersSunetra Gupta is an acclaimed novelist, essayist and scientist. In October 2012 her fifth novel, So Good in Black, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. In 2009 she was named as the winner of the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific achievements. Sunetra, who lives in Oxford with her husband and two daughters, is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University's Department of Zoology, having graduated in 1987 from Princeton University and received her PhD from the University of London in 1992. Sunetra was born in Calcutta in 1965 and wrote her first works of fiction in Bengali. She is an accomplished translator of the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 28, 2012
The language of this book is undeniably beautiful. Likewise the carefully chosen symbolism of the various colors (of sin). I Must admit I found the style irritating at times. Long paragraphs of run-on sentences connected by commas, in particular, but I wonder if there isn't a point to that choice as it is clearly deliberate. Perhaps Gupta was demonstrating the rushing, uncontrollable, seamlessness of obsession, and using the style to support the narrative. Overall I found it to be a deeply sad book, but then obsession of any sort is rarely a happy thing. Each of the main characters is driven by an obsession with something or someone and as a result all lead at least partially unfulfilled lives as prisoners unable to escape its irrational grip. I was surprised by the conclusion although after reading it I felt I shouldn't have been. The book is so much better, more original and inventive, than most books around these days, so if you are looking for a challenging read, do try it.
October 10, 2021
This book was a huge disappointment to me. I thought I had found a hidden gem in a second-hand bookshop but ended up getting more and more irritated with it as I read on. It felt promising in the first chapters but for me it had several major flaws :
THE TELLING BUT NOT SHOWING
The novel gives us several supposedly boundless, depthless, eternal loves. The loved ones are everything the lovers ever wanted, the only person they could ever love, their reason for living and dying, for “succumbing to obsessions stronger than life itself”. However, the author fails to immerse us in these all-consuming passions. We know that they exist only because she tells us so. We don’t experience them happening, taking root, growing, developing and taking over the lovers in all their “awful”, tragic glory.
While I could still be moved by Indranath Roy’s undying love for his silent, ethereal wife, withdrawn from the world into herself, too pure and refined in spirit to be touched, his son is another matter.
When telling us about Debendranath Roy’s (using his full name throughout the novel makes him seem even more pedantic than he already is) fathomless passion for his aloof and haughty sister-in-law Reba who diminishes everyone around by her grace and regal bearing and of whose true feelings he has no idea, the author is getting quite overwrought, going on about the “sublime expanse of her loneliness”, his “trying to cherish her memory without agony”, “holding her memory sacred”, etc. etc.
Then there is his niece Niharika who meets her fate in Oxford in the person of Daniel Faraday. She’s incredibly beautiful and intelligent and has a great sense of humour and he’s gorgeous and suave and interesting and a man of the world and inevitably they fall in love with each other the first time they meet (or so we are told).
Niharika moves to the US and ends up being best friends with manic-depressive gay Morgan, another victim of Daniel Faraday's irresistibleness and - united in their impossible love for the man - they worship together at his shrine.
THE SOAP OPERA ELEMENTS
Daniel Faraday is conveniently married and conveniently unwilling to leave his wife and son which is of course the perfect starting point for a tragic, heartbreaking love story.
Niharika is back in India, in the huge old crumbling family mansion called “Mandalay”. There, just before leaving for England, she meets this young doctor, good-looking, intelligent, sensitive and devoted to helping the poor who is conveniently not married so here’s Niharika’s chance to free herself from her doomed love for Daniel Faraday and live a happy, fulfilling life at the doctor’s side, turning part of “Mandalay” into a clinic for the poor etc. etc.
Back in England she decides to marry the young doctor but guess what, just before moving back to India there’s Daniel Faraday on her doorstep who in the meantime has inherited his late depressed friend Morgan’s millions and though "his motives are clothed in the sweet mercury of reflected sin” there’s “the awful depth of their love”, “part of their destiny that nothing could deny”.
There is also mild, doormat-like Jennifer, the British wife, so lacking in self-confidence and so grateful to her husband for letting her love him. Despite all the wrongs and cruelties committed against her by Debendranath Roy, including faking his own death and spending 20 years tucked away in a Himalayan hill-station, renouncing everything but his love for Reba and “devoted to the perfect contemplation of her” Jennifer lets bygones be bygones and welcomes the chance to dedicate her life to caring for him in his blindness, old age and lack of money which are the reasons for his return to the land of the living.
THE STRAINED ANALOGIES AND CHOICE OF VOCABULARY
“Memories fell through him like pieces of tarnished cutlery.”
“The hot August nights stamped through her like herds of panting buffalo.”
“Words like an army of ragged claws upon his tongue.”
“desuetude”, “aceramic”, “coruscating”, “nectareous” ?
THE UNSPEAKABLE POMPOUSNESS
“Now” she says “you have come to destroy all that I have attempted to create, to crush in your palms the fruit of the pain that I have nursed for so long, but if it must be so, so be it, for there is no one like you, and without you I can only call back the shadows of what I would have as my fate, only that these shadows are beautiful and mellow…..”
“My beloved” he says, kissing her upon her closed eyes “can you not keep me as a secret dream within you, a flow of lava beneath the quiet crater, never threatening only there, free to bubble sometimes through some unwary crack and char you a little, but nothing more. Can you not go back to your saint, your holy mendicant, your strolling player, with me in your heart ? Can you not return unsanctified to that temple, am I not worth that .”
To quote Jack Lemmon to Tony Curtis in “Some like it hot” : “NOBODY TALKS LIKE THAT !”
THE TELLING BUT NOT SHOWING
The novel gives us several supposedly boundless, depthless, eternal loves. The loved ones are everything the lovers ever wanted, the only person they could ever love, their reason for living and dying, for “succumbing to obsessions stronger than life itself”. However, the author fails to immerse us in these all-consuming passions. We know that they exist only because she tells us so. We don’t experience them happening, taking root, growing, developing and taking over the lovers in all their “awful”, tragic glory.
While I could still be moved by Indranath Roy’s undying love for his silent, ethereal wife, withdrawn from the world into herself, too pure and refined in spirit to be touched, his son is another matter.
When telling us about Debendranath Roy’s (using his full name throughout the novel makes him seem even more pedantic than he already is) fathomless passion for his aloof and haughty sister-in-law Reba who diminishes everyone around by her grace and regal bearing and of whose true feelings he has no idea, the author is getting quite overwrought, going on about the “sublime expanse of her loneliness”, his “trying to cherish her memory without agony”, “holding her memory sacred”, etc. etc.
Then there is his niece Niharika who meets her fate in Oxford in the person of Daniel Faraday. She’s incredibly beautiful and intelligent and has a great sense of humour and he’s gorgeous and suave and interesting and a man of the world and inevitably they fall in love with each other the first time they meet (or so we are told).
Niharika moves to the US and ends up being best friends with manic-depressive gay Morgan, another victim of Daniel Faraday's irresistibleness and - united in their impossible love for the man - they worship together at his shrine.
THE SOAP OPERA ELEMENTS
Daniel Faraday is conveniently married and conveniently unwilling to leave his wife and son which is of course the perfect starting point for a tragic, heartbreaking love story.
Niharika is back in India, in the huge old crumbling family mansion called “Mandalay”. There, just before leaving for England, she meets this young doctor, good-looking, intelligent, sensitive and devoted to helping the poor who is conveniently not married so here’s Niharika’s chance to free herself from her doomed love for Daniel Faraday and live a happy, fulfilling life at the doctor’s side, turning part of “Mandalay” into a clinic for the poor etc. etc.
Back in England she decides to marry the young doctor but guess what, just before moving back to India there’s Daniel Faraday on her doorstep who in the meantime has inherited his late depressed friend Morgan’s millions and though "his motives are clothed in the sweet mercury of reflected sin” there’s “the awful depth of their love”, “part of their destiny that nothing could deny”.
There is also mild, doormat-like Jennifer, the British wife, so lacking in self-confidence and so grateful to her husband for letting her love him. Despite all the wrongs and cruelties committed against her by Debendranath Roy, including faking his own death and spending 20 years tucked away in a Himalayan hill-station, renouncing everything but his love for Reba and “devoted to the perfect contemplation of her” Jennifer lets bygones be bygones and welcomes the chance to dedicate her life to caring for him in his blindness, old age and lack of money which are the reasons for his return to the land of the living.
THE STRAINED ANALOGIES AND CHOICE OF VOCABULARY
“Memories fell through him like pieces of tarnished cutlery.”
“The hot August nights stamped through her like herds of panting buffalo.”
“Words like an army of ragged claws upon his tongue.”
“desuetude”, “aceramic”, “coruscating”, “nectareous” ?
THE UNSPEAKABLE POMPOUSNESS
“Now” she says “you have come to destroy all that I have attempted to create, to crush in your palms the fruit of the pain that I have nursed for so long, but if it must be so, so be it, for there is no one like you, and without you I can only call back the shadows of what I would have as my fate, only that these shadows are beautiful and mellow…..”
“My beloved” he says, kissing her upon her closed eyes “can you not keep me as a secret dream within you, a flow of lava beneath the quiet crater, never threatening only there, free to bubble sometimes through some unwary crack and char you a little, but nothing more. Can you not go back to your saint, your holy mendicant, your strolling player, with me in your heart ? Can you not return unsanctified to that temple, am I not worth that .”
To quote Jack Lemmon to Tony Curtis in “Some like it hot” : “NOBODY TALKS LIKE THAT !”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 26, 2010
This is a beautifully written novel about the pain of unrequited love, its consequences and the desicions that are made because of it. Debendranath Roy comes to Oxford in the wake of his crippling love for his brother's wife. Here he meets Jennifer. Years later Debendranath is believed drowned in the Cherwell, and his neice Niharika comes to Oxford to study. It is here she meets Daniel Faraday, the last man to see her Uncle alive, and a married man whom she is destined to fall in love with, and through whom she meets the mysterious Morgan. Both Debendranath's and Niharika's stories take us to Calcutta, and to the house Mandalay (and yes the author has not resisted the urge to use that famous line - twice) where we meet a faithful old gatekeeper, and a young doctor who spends some of his time working with the poor.
The writing is excellent, with both Oxford and Calcutta coming to life - the Cherwell, the colleges, the slowly decaying house in Calcutta suffused with memories of the past. The characters are well observed, their motivations and pain beautifully described.
The writing is excellent, with both Oxford and Calcutta coming to life - the Cherwell, the colleges, the slowly decaying house in Calcutta suffused with memories of the past. The characters are well observed, their motivations and pain beautifully described.
November 14, 2017
A well crafted book, this had me engrossed for the most part. Writing in rich detail, Gupta takes us through the travails of obsession across time and space. At first, I was very impressed by the shifting viewpoints of the narration, going from person to person, and from time to time. Somewhere in the middle of the book, it got a bit overwhelming as the author could not hold a viewpoint for too long before leaping. In the end, it was still a poignant tale of yearning and separation, and well worth the read.
January 17, 2023
Love is unfathomable; you find it at unexpected places, you can't "get over" it when you like, you can't plan it. Love is at best an unearthly trait. Only some learn of it and it either sets them free or ruins them, entirely.
Sin of color is “a sin of proper beauty, and not some mean thing”.
Sin of color is “a sin of proper beauty, and not some mean thing”.
October 26, 2022
The more I say about this book, the less I say. I just finished this magnificent novel, and will come back with a review once I have gathered my overwhelming sense of obsession for 'A Sin of Color.'
January 3, 2024
An odd book that seemed to start on a topic, get sidetracked to another topic, and never return to the first to finish the thought. And I know this is an odd comment, but the paragraphs were just so bloody long. A page or two pages per paragraph.
October 7, 2009
This book is beautifully written. You are immediately immersed in the thoughts and anxieties of the protagonist. It is good read for those who appreciate Virginia's Woolf stream of consciousness style. The plot is described as a story of obsession. You first meet Debendranath Roy, who is obsessed with his brothers wife. Later you meet Niharika Roy, his niece who is in love with a married man. I appreciated and connected more with Niharika's story, I'm not sure if that is female solidarity but overall this was good read!
April 8, 2013
melancholy and depression. basically: everlasting longing for unattainable goals and love lost or unrequited. not one character has a happy situation. shees. and all this told in a beautiful, although rambling at times, but always intelligent and clear-minded language. (was this a good book to follow after one with the gore of the US Civil War? this certainly wasn't gory but it was painful without redeeming or uplifting the crushed reader).
March 24, 2012
This was a 4 or 5 star book until the last three pages. I really, really want to talk to someone else who's read it. I'm not sure if I've missed something, the very end is that annoying, or if I'm just a philistine who can't appreciate the majesty of it.
April 21, 2010
Ow, ow, ow, ow my eyes!
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July 31, 2013Interesting ending
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews