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Between the Assassinations
Welcome to Kittur, India. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads between the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and the prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.
A series of sketches that together form a blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, Between the Assassinations , with all the humor, sympathy, and unflinching candor of The White Tiger , enlarges our understanding of the world we live in today.
A series of sketches that together form a blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, Between the Assassinations , with all the humor, sympathy, and unflinching candor of The White Tiger , enlarges our understanding of the world we live in today.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
285 people are currently reading
3731 people want to read
About the author
Aravind Adiga
22 books2,529 followersAravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Madras (now called Chennai), and grew up in Mangalore in the south of India. He was educated at Columbia University in New York and Magdalen College, Oxford. His articles have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Times of India. His debut novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2008. Its release was followed by a collection of short stories in the book titled Between the Assassinations. His second novel, Last Man in the Tower, was published in 2011. His newest novel, Selection Day, was published in 2016.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 656 reviews
May 12, 2010
Better than White Tiger. I was born in Calicut, north of which this book is based. Some of the tensions and by plays are very familiar and resonate painfully.
Brilliant book, makes small town Southern India come alive in a fashion that hasn't been seen in 'Indian literature in English' for a long time.
I'm using my words carefully here, there are several brilliant portrayals of Small town India in regional writing in India in several languages - malayalam, tamil, kannada and so on. Several good translations as well. However to a person from outside India, this is a brilliant tour de force.
Brilliant book, makes small town Southern India come alive in a fashion that hasn't been seen in 'Indian literature in English' for a long time.
I'm using my words carefully here, there are several brilliant portrayals of Small town India in regional writing in India in several languages - malayalam, tamil, kannada and so on. Several good translations as well. However to a person from outside India, this is a brilliant tour de force.
July 21, 2009
The title of "Between the Assassinations" refers to the seven-year period between 1984 -- when Indira Gandhi was assassinated -- and 1991 when her son Rajiv was also killed. Set in India, the book captures a cross-spectrum view of life in a town called Kittur, where the characters include a drug addict's chldren who have to beg to keep up their father's habit; a 29 year old furniture delivery man who realizes that this is his life; a servant to a wealthy man who has no control over her own life; factory owners and workers; a student who explodes a bomb at his school in protest of caste distinction; a boy whose one ambition is to become a bus conductor, along with many more. The book is set up so that each story fits into a fake guidebook for tourists who might wish to visit Kittur.
Between the Assassinations looks at class and caste, poverty, corruption, politics, moral bankruptcy, and the overpowering awareness by many that change is not coming around any too soon. It is a sad but touching book, one that haunts you for a while after you've finished it.
The tourist guidebook setting works well -- the reader sees the city of Kittur as it could and should be, but once you get into the individual stories, the reader gets into the reality and hopelessness of the situation of many of the people who live there. Some of the stories work very well, but there are some that kind of wind down and just get strange so that you're left on your own to figure out what's just happened and why. This is definitely a book demanding reader participation.
The reader is left to decide whether or not there is hope for the characters in this book, and for India overall. Some of the characters realize that their situation is untenable and have hope for the future, while some (such as the servant, Jayamma) hope that the next life in the cycle of reincarnation will be better. Some know that this is it, and that they are locked in to their lives due to their station in life. Some struggle with their demons while trying to maintain the basic element of humanity and morality in their lives. In the meantime, life goes on, at least until someone comes up with a solution.
Bleak, yes, but very realistic in tone. Adiga's writing is excellent. I would recommend this book for people who do not mind a) having to put some thought and time into these stories and b) reading a book that leaves no room for warm and fuzzy feelings anywhere. Not all literature has to have a happy ending, because, well, in life sometimes there is no such thing.
Between the Assassinations looks at class and caste, poverty, corruption, politics, moral bankruptcy, and the overpowering awareness by many that change is not coming around any too soon. It is a sad but touching book, one that haunts you for a while after you've finished it.
The tourist guidebook setting works well -- the reader sees the city of Kittur as it could and should be, but once you get into the individual stories, the reader gets into the reality and hopelessness of the situation of many of the people who live there. Some of the stories work very well, but there are some that kind of wind down and just get strange so that you're left on your own to figure out what's just happened and why. This is definitely a book demanding reader participation.
The reader is left to decide whether or not there is hope for the characters in this book, and for India overall. Some of the characters realize that their situation is untenable and have hope for the future, while some (such as the servant, Jayamma) hope that the next life in the cycle of reincarnation will be better. Some know that this is it, and that they are locked in to their lives due to their station in life. Some struggle with their demons while trying to maintain the basic element of humanity and morality in their lives. In the meantime, life goes on, at least until someone comes up with a solution.
Bleak, yes, but very realistic in tone. Adiga's writing is excellent. I would recommend this book for people who do not mind a) having to put some thought and time into these stories and b) reading a book that leaves no room for warm and fuzzy feelings anywhere. Not all literature has to have a happy ending, because, well, in life sometimes there is no such thing.
February 10, 2017
Short stories - really good.
Adiga can make you feel and smell and taste the poverty of India, through description and character, and it ain't pretty. But it's real. Or at least it feels real -- I've never been to India, so what do I know?
Heavy on bodily discharges of all sorts; and eachseenscene (egads!) drips with almost unbearable heat and humidity. The filth is metaphorical too: corruption, physical pain, disease is everywhere; violence looms (although here, unlike in The White Tiger, it never erupts). Each character is desperate; they are hanging on to their last hope.
Each story illustrates a unique predicament, unified by the overarching despair and unfairness imposed by the caste system.
Each story ends with -- I'm sure there's a literary term for this -- a kind of unexpected twist that predicts but doesn't describe a decision or closure. This, plus Adiga's ability to get us to feel empathy for characters who really are hard to look at, hard to feel for because the tendency is to be repulsed by them or to distance ourselves from them considering them "other", really places him among the top tier of his contemporaries writing in similar ways/about similar places (I'm thinking in particular of Rohinton Mistry.
Lots of rich sociological insights and a deep humanism, but Adiga never bangs you over the head with the politics or economics, not even when he's referring very directly to real-world events.
I look forward to his next fiction, whether it's novel or short story form. He seems to work well in both.
Adiga can make you feel and smell and taste the poverty of India, through description and character, and it ain't pretty. But it's real. Or at least it feels real -- I've never been to India, so what do I know?
Heavy on bodily discharges of all sorts; and each
Each story illustrates a unique predicament, unified by the overarching despair and unfairness imposed by the caste system.
Each story ends with -- I'm sure there's a literary term for this -- a kind of unexpected twist that predicts but doesn't describe a decision or closure. This, plus Adiga's ability to get us to feel empathy for characters who really are hard to look at, hard to feel for because the tendency is to be repulsed by them or to distance ourselves from them considering them "other", really places him among the top tier of his contemporaries writing in similar ways/about similar places (I'm thinking in particular of Rohinton Mistry.
Lots of rich sociological insights and a deep humanism, but Adiga never bangs you over the head with the politics or economics, not even when he's referring very directly to real-world events.
I look forward to his next fiction, whether it's novel or short story form. He seems to work well in both.
July 13, 2021
The writing is fast-paced and this is the main reason how I got through this book.
There's just a lot of talk about communal clashes and discrimination, corruption and whatever that does not seem right about a restless society.
The story has so much to tell but I felt like it didn't have a particular direction to look forward to.
The writing accurately presented the stereotypes we have about certain communities, caste discrimination and the political scenario amidst we live in.
Content warnings assault, strong language, violence and sensitive remarks towards certain communities, cruelty towards animals.
Most part of the first half focused much on the confused youth in schools about history, politics and the adult characters who seem confused themselves trying to maintain discipline and teaching through strict rules without being able to make the students understand what they need to know. The classroom scenarios depict exactly how rote-learning is being doggedly encouraged and anything aside from the textbooks being not allowed or appreciated.
The lack of respect for people in general and how most of the adults the young, confused youth meet in their lives end up taking advantage of them are vividly shown in the story.
Towards the second half, the story didn't progressed much and I lost all interest in the story.
I wish there was a distinct plot to focus on. I wish the characters weren't too many which ended up being included without much purpose. Trying to put all kinds of societal issues without a proper story to tell made the book rather dull and flat.
There's just a lot of talk about communal clashes and discrimination, corruption and whatever that does not seem right about a restless society.
The story has so much to tell but I felt like it didn't have a particular direction to look forward to.
The writing accurately presented the stereotypes we have about certain communities, caste discrimination and the political scenario amidst we live in.
Content warnings assault, strong language, violence and sensitive remarks towards certain communities, cruelty towards animals.
Most part of the first half focused much on the confused youth in schools about history, politics and the adult characters who seem confused themselves trying to maintain discipline and teaching through strict rules without being able to make the students understand what they need to know. The classroom scenarios depict exactly how rote-learning is being doggedly encouraged and anything aside from the textbooks being not allowed or appreciated.
The lack of respect for people in general and how most of the adults the young, confused youth meet in their lives end up taking advantage of them are vividly shown in the story.
Towards the second half, the story didn't progressed much and I lost all interest in the story.
I wish there was a distinct plot to focus on. I wish the characters weren't too many which ended up being included without much purpose. Trying to put all kinds of societal issues without a proper story to tell made the book rather dull and flat.
August 2, 2009
Thank god this is short stories, so I was able to pause between the resounding slap of each delineated life. We know we're privileged, right? Living in India would be pretty bad, "local color" aside, right? If you're white, sitting in an armchair with a computer in front of you, well - you'll never even get close to understanding it. But perhaps you might try, with a book like this.
This book is angry like a furnace about caste, baksheesh, poverty and poshlost. It's set in the '80s but clearly, not much has changed, bar the arrival of illegal cable. I've been reading another book about the difficulties of being Catholic in '50s Australia - but that kind of discrimination is laughable compared to being a Dalit cycle-cart courier, without the right to sit on a chair without being slapped in the face for it.
This is an earlier book than Adiga's big Booker hit The White Tiger, and I'm not going to sneer at its palpable agitation for change, its young man's preaching and relentlessness. I think they work in this context, and the writing is beautiful even when describing the ugly.
But be warned, there's plenty of ugly.
This book is angry like a furnace about caste, baksheesh, poverty and poshlost. It's set in the '80s but clearly, not much has changed, bar the arrival of illegal cable. I've been reading another book about the difficulties of being Catholic in '50s Australia - but that kind of discrimination is laughable compared to being a Dalit cycle-cart courier, without the right to sit on a chair without being slapped in the face for it.
This is an earlier book than Adiga's big Booker hit The White Tiger, and I'm not going to sneer at its palpable agitation for change, its young man's preaching and relentlessness. I think they work in this context, and the writing is beautiful even when describing the ugly.
But be warned, there's plenty of ugly.
August 26, 2009
After loving White Tiger I was quite excited to read this one but it is a let down on so many levels.
The format is annoying - it is neither a novel nor an anthology of stories -more a collection of episodes related by setting. The writing is inferior to White Tiger and only after reading did I find out that this was a rejected work that went unpublished until his Booker prize win.
Disjointed, episodic tale of an Indian town....some of the episodes are interesting others...particularly the last two are just dull.
Not recommended
The format is annoying - it is neither a novel nor an anthology of stories -more a collection of episodes related by setting. The writing is inferior to White Tiger and only after reading did I find out that this was a rejected work that went unpublished until his Booker prize win.
Disjointed, episodic tale of an Indian town....some of the episodes are interesting others...particularly the last two are just dull.
Not recommended
July 16, 2020
Collection of short stories around a small town Kitur. There is no hero in this story not are villains. There are only characters that you see in your life.
The mostly dark face of life that you won't find in a happy go lucky kind of story.
The mostly dark face of life that you won't find in a happy go lucky kind of story.
July 30, 2020
Have read all the 4 books that Arvind Adiga has published till now. But only while reading this, I realised they are all about the class divide + caste divide that largely defines the society's functioning in India. The reason being he is kind of blunt about that fact in this collection of stories.
It is a collection of stories - loosely interlinked - set in a small town named Kittur on the south-western coast of India, between the 2 assassinations: that of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and her son Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, both sitting Prime ministers when they were killed. It is not a spoiler to say that you get the connection between the stories only after reading a short chronology of events that happened in that time period at the end of the book. Otherwise, the stories don't have much of a connection to the assassinations or to each other except sharing the geography.
I hugely liked most of the stories and it would be a spoiler frankly to summarise each of them in a single line. They all talk about the class/caste divide though it doesn't get into total bashing of the upper class/caste. For instance, I hugely liked the story of a Brahmin woman born under unfortunate circumstances and having to work as a servant in one household after another and the bond she shares with a hoyka (relatively lower caste) girl. The ending of that story was really poignant. Another story about a quack and a young man and how fate puts them in a bind together was awesome too. Also, was totally hooked to the story of the editor of Dawn Herald, Kittur's only newspaper. Liked all the other stories too.
Actual rating: 4.5 stars.
It is a collection of stories - loosely interlinked - set in a small town named Kittur on the south-western coast of India, between the 2 assassinations: that of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and her son Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, both sitting Prime ministers when they were killed. It is not a spoiler to say that you get the connection between the stories only after reading a short chronology of events that happened in that time period at the end of the book. Otherwise, the stories don't have much of a connection to the assassinations or to each other except sharing the geography.
I hugely liked most of the stories and it would be a spoiler frankly to summarise each of them in a single line. They all talk about the class/caste divide though it doesn't get into total bashing of the upper class/caste. For instance, I hugely liked the story of a Brahmin woman born under unfortunate circumstances and having to work as a servant in one household after another and the bond she shares with a hoyka (relatively lower caste) girl. The ending of that story was really poignant. Another story about a quack and a young man and how fate puts them in a bind together was awesome too. Also, was totally hooked to the story of the editor of Dawn Herald, Kittur's only newspaper. Liked all the other stories too.
Actual rating: 4.5 stars.
August 18, 2009
I really enjoyed this collection of stories set in a fictional southern Indian town, Kittur. The stories are mostly bleak and morose. Adiga's characters face life with the fatalistic belief that nothing will ever change for them. They are stuck in a cycle that they know they will never escape. Some are angry, some are resigned, and some (very few) are hopeful in tone. But the main character, throughout all the stories, is India, in all her guts and glory. While I enjoyed some stories in this collection more than others, they all moved me in some way. The characters are vivid, true and wonderfully three-dimensional for the forty or so pages they are given.
And the language is so lush- Kittur, India really comes to life- the sights and sounds, the tastes and smells. Some of the sentences just struck a chord. For example, "She lay in the storage room, seeking comfort in the fumes of the DDT and the sight of the Baby Krishna's silver buttocks." Or, "The centerpiece of his body was a massive potbelly, a hard knot of flesh pregnant with a dozen cardiac arrests." It was so much fun to read a whole book full of sentences like these. Adiga creates characters you can cheer for, and writes in such a beautiful manner that you will want this one for your keeper shelves. Highly recommended!
Also, if you like this book, I'd highly recommend In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin. It is set in Pakistan in the 1970s and is also excellent.
And the language is so lush- Kittur, India really comes to life- the sights and sounds, the tastes and smells. Some of the sentences just struck a chord. For example, "She lay in the storage room, seeking comfort in the fumes of the DDT and the sight of the Baby Krishna's silver buttocks." Or, "The centerpiece of his body was a massive potbelly, a hard knot of flesh pregnant with a dozen cardiac arrests." It was so much fun to read a whole book full of sentences like these. Adiga creates characters you can cheer for, and writes in such a beautiful manner that you will want this one for your keeper shelves. Highly recommended!
Also, if you like this book, I'd highly recommend In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin. It is set in Pakistan in the 1970s and is also excellent.
May 24, 2021
El presente libro se compone de varias historias independientes. Cada una comienza con una breve "guía turística" relacionada al pequeño pueblo de Kittur, en India, sobre el mar arábigo.
Es muy agradable e interesante de leer; pero difícil de analizar y digerir. Mi pensamiento occidental apenas logra comprender el trasfondo milenario de las diferencias entre castas y religiones en dicho país.
El corazón se te cierra ante tanta miseria e injusticia. Hambre, pobreza y rebeldía pueblan los distintos relatos. El autor, con cierta dosis de humor, nos sumerge en distintas situaciones para comprender la punta del iceberg de la maravillosa, caótica e incomprensible India.
Mención aparte para el título en español. ¿El faro de los libros? Hubiera sido mejor la traducción literal del inglés “Between the Assassinations” que refiere al período entre las muertes de Indira Ghandi y su hijo, que es el espacio temporal que abarcan los relatos.
Es muy agradable e interesante de leer; pero difícil de analizar y digerir. Mi pensamiento occidental apenas logra comprender el trasfondo milenario de las diferencias entre castas y religiones en dicho país.
El corazón se te cierra ante tanta miseria e injusticia. Hambre, pobreza y rebeldía pueblan los distintos relatos. El autor, con cierta dosis de humor, nos sumerge en distintas situaciones para comprender la punta del iceberg de la maravillosa, caótica e incomprensible India.
Mención aparte para el título en español. ¿El faro de los libros? Hubiera sido mejor la traducción literal del inglés “Between the Assassinations” que refiere al período entre las muertes de Indira Ghandi y su hijo, que es el espacio temporal que abarcan los relatos.
August 16, 2014
I really liked The White Tiger, but I’m a bit disappointed in this, a collection of short stories – written before Adiga won the Booker last year, but not published until afterwards. Publishers sometimes do this with prize-winning authors: they resurrect previously rejected work and rush it out into the bookshops while the author’s high profile guarantees good sales. I have learned the hard way to be suspicious of books published too soon after a big prize by a first-time author. Between the Assassinations came from the library, picked up out of curiosity but with no great expectations.
Read the rest at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200...
Read the rest at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200...
July 26, 2023
The politics of misery…
The news of the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 reaches the town of Kittur in southern India via the BBC. Seven years later, the assassination of her son Rajiv is announced to the townspeople via CNN. The fourteen stories in this collection tell the tales of the town and its residents over the intervening period. And what a miserable tale they tell! This falls firmly into the miseryfest genre so beloved of many Indian authors, as epitomised by Rohinton Mistry in a book that surpasses even Steinbeck for its portrayal of human misery, A Fine Balance. I mention it because I felt that a young Adiga must have been strongly influenced by that book when writing this debut collection*, and seems to be competing for the prize for Most Miserable Fiction of All Time. In the end, his natural humour and humanity means that he fails – for some of his characters at least life is not irredeemably hopeless, cruelly though Adiga treats them.
The stories are political though not polemical. Adiga is setting out to show the evils of profound poverty, the caste system, religious sectarianism, and corruption. His excellent writing and his skill at drawing believable and complex characters with just a few strokes of the pen are already on display, and this carried me through – just – when the misery overload was tempting me to give up. In later books Adiga gets a much better balance, still showing the huge divides and inequalities in Indian society, but also allowing his characters to enjoy at least some of the good things in life. In this one, we are shown his characters brutalised in every imaginable way. Men are beaten by their employers, women are used as little more than slaves, children are forced to beg on the streets. There are lepers and people with disabilities of all kinds, often as a result of horrific workplace conditions, all begging from a society that would rather look the other way. There are hopeless people living lives empty of love or joy. There are drunks and drug addicts, and men with sexually transmitted diseases, and people scrabbling in bins for scraps of food to keep them alive for another hellish day. There are parents who don’t love their children and children who don’t love their parents. And there’s extremism, and terrorism, and death.
It’s not that I find any of this unbelievable nor that I feel it shouldn’t be written about. It’s that when there’s a complete lack of contrast the whole thing quite quickly becomes numbing. The greatest tragedies rely on the reader caring about the characters and having hope for them, and then seeing that hope destroyed. Adiga achieves the first part here – I cared about many of these characters – but it soon becomes obvious that they are to be given no hope and so it becomes simply a matter of watching their misery drag out until the story ends. When the aspect of hope is removed, it feels to me that what is left is more like reportage, for which of course there is an important place. But I’d suggest that that place is not in fiction.
I nearly gave up several times along the way but in the end I’m glad I stuck with it, since the last couple of stories have a rather different tone, with much more of the nuance I expect from Adiga. Finally he shows that not everyone in the town is in the deepest poverty and he suggests that there are improvements beginning to happen even for those at the very bottom. His characters still suffer, but of slightly higher level misery – love, family and politics – rather than the starkness of hunger, brutality and disease. At last there are glimmerings of hope, if not for the individuals, at least for the society. And with the return of hope along comes a little humour which gives a much-needed lift. I have no idea whether he wrote the stories in order and over a period of time or not, but it felt to me as I read them that his style developed from being sub-Mistry in the early ones to being distinctly Adiga by the end. Would I recommend it? Yes, certainly, to the many people who love Mistry and don’t share my aversion to unrelieved misery in fiction, and also to Adiga fans who will probably be interested, as I was, to see how he started out. But I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to him for new readers – for the most part I don’t think it’s as good as his later style becomes. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
*Although this was published after The White Tiger, I believe that it was written earlier but failed to find a publisher until that one won him the Booker.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
The news of the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 reaches the town of Kittur in southern India via the BBC. Seven years later, the assassination of her son Rajiv is announced to the townspeople via CNN. The fourteen stories in this collection tell the tales of the town and its residents over the intervening period. And what a miserable tale they tell! This falls firmly into the miseryfest genre so beloved of many Indian authors, as epitomised by Rohinton Mistry in a book that surpasses even Steinbeck for its portrayal of human misery, A Fine Balance. I mention it because I felt that a young Adiga must have been strongly influenced by that book when writing this debut collection*, and seems to be competing for the prize for Most Miserable Fiction of All Time. In the end, his natural humour and humanity means that he fails – for some of his characters at least life is not irredeemably hopeless, cruelly though Adiga treats them.
The stories are political though not polemical. Adiga is setting out to show the evils of profound poverty, the caste system, religious sectarianism, and corruption. His excellent writing and his skill at drawing believable and complex characters with just a few strokes of the pen are already on display, and this carried me through – just – when the misery overload was tempting me to give up. In later books Adiga gets a much better balance, still showing the huge divides and inequalities in Indian society, but also allowing his characters to enjoy at least some of the good things in life. In this one, we are shown his characters brutalised in every imaginable way. Men are beaten by their employers, women are used as little more than slaves, children are forced to beg on the streets. There are lepers and people with disabilities of all kinds, often as a result of horrific workplace conditions, all begging from a society that would rather look the other way. There are hopeless people living lives empty of love or joy. There are drunks and drug addicts, and men with sexually transmitted diseases, and people scrabbling in bins for scraps of food to keep them alive for another hellish day. There are parents who don’t love their children and children who don’t love their parents. And there’s extremism, and terrorism, and death.
It’s not that I find any of this unbelievable nor that I feel it shouldn’t be written about. It’s that when there’s a complete lack of contrast the whole thing quite quickly becomes numbing. The greatest tragedies rely on the reader caring about the characters and having hope for them, and then seeing that hope destroyed. Adiga achieves the first part here – I cared about many of these characters – but it soon becomes obvious that they are to be given no hope and so it becomes simply a matter of watching their misery drag out until the story ends. When the aspect of hope is removed, it feels to me that what is left is more like reportage, for which of course there is an important place. But I’d suggest that that place is not in fiction.
I nearly gave up several times along the way but in the end I’m glad I stuck with it, since the last couple of stories have a rather different tone, with much more of the nuance I expect from Adiga. Finally he shows that not everyone in the town is in the deepest poverty and he suggests that there are improvements beginning to happen even for those at the very bottom. His characters still suffer, but of slightly higher level misery – love, family and politics – rather than the starkness of hunger, brutality and disease. At last there are glimmerings of hope, if not for the individuals, at least for the society. And with the return of hope along comes a little humour which gives a much-needed lift. I have no idea whether he wrote the stories in order and over a period of time or not, but it felt to me as I read them that his style developed from being sub-Mistry in the early ones to being distinctly Adiga by the end. Would I recommend it? Yes, certainly, to the many people who love Mistry and don’t share my aversion to unrelieved misery in fiction, and also to Adiga fans who will probably be interested, as I was, to see how he started out. But I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to him for new readers – for the most part I don’t think it’s as good as his later style becomes. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
*Although this was published after The White Tiger, I believe that it was written earlier but failed to find a publisher until that one won him the Booker.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
November 22, 2011
Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger won the Booker Prize and was notable for its intriguing form. I thought it would be a hard act to follow. It would need a great writer to be able to make a repeat match of both originality and style with engaging content. So on beginning Between The Assassinations I was prepared to be disappointed. I need not have worried because Aravind Adiga’s 2010 novel is perhaps a greater success than the earlier prize winner.
The novel does not have a linear plot, nor does it feature any resolution to satisfy the kind of reader that needs a story. But it does have its stories, several of them. Between The Assassinations is in fact a set of short stories, albeit related, rather than a novel. But the beauty of the form is that the book sets these different and indeed divergent tales in a single place, a fictitious town called Kittur.
It’s on India’s west coast, south of Goa and north of Cochin. Kittur presents the expected mix of religion, caste and class that uniquely yet never definitively illustrate Indian society. And by means of stories that highlight cultural, linguistic and social similarities and differences, Aravind Adiga paints a compelling and utterly vivid picture of life in the town. The observation that this amalgam both influences and in some ways determines these experiences is what makes Between The Assassinations a novel rather than a set of stories. It is the place and its culture that is the main character.
The title gives the setting in time. The book’s material thus spans the years between the assassinations of the two Ghandis, Indira and Rajiv. So it is the 1980s, and politics, business, marriage, love, loyalty, development, change and corruption all figure. Aravind Adiga’s juxtaposition of themes to be found in Kittur town and society thus leads us through times of questioning, rapid change and wealth creation. The book’s major success is that this conducted tour of recent history never once leads the reader where the reader does not willingly want to go. The stories are vivid, the personal relationships intriguing, the settings both informative and challenging.
Between The Assassinations is a remarkable achievement. The author has succeeded in writing a thoroughly serious novel with strong intellectual threads via a set of related stories that can each be enjoyed at face value, just as stories, if that is what the reader wants. Writing rarely gets as sophisticated as this or indeed as enjoyable, since humour, often rather barbed, is always close to the surface. Between The Assassinations is a wonderful achievement.
The novel does not have a linear plot, nor does it feature any resolution to satisfy the kind of reader that needs a story. But it does have its stories, several of them. Between The Assassinations is in fact a set of short stories, albeit related, rather than a novel. But the beauty of the form is that the book sets these different and indeed divergent tales in a single place, a fictitious town called Kittur.
It’s on India’s west coast, south of Goa and north of Cochin. Kittur presents the expected mix of religion, caste and class that uniquely yet never definitively illustrate Indian society. And by means of stories that highlight cultural, linguistic and social similarities and differences, Aravind Adiga paints a compelling and utterly vivid picture of life in the town. The observation that this amalgam both influences and in some ways determines these experiences is what makes Between The Assassinations a novel rather than a set of stories. It is the place and its culture that is the main character.
The title gives the setting in time. The book’s material thus spans the years between the assassinations of the two Ghandis, Indira and Rajiv. So it is the 1980s, and politics, business, marriage, love, loyalty, development, change and corruption all figure. Aravind Adiga’s juxtaposition of themes to be found in Kittur town and society thus leads us through times of questioning, rapid change and wealth creation. The book’s major success is that this conducted tour of recent history never once leads the reader where the reader does not willingly want to go. The stories are vivid, the personal relationships intriguing, the settings both informative and challenging.
Between The Assassinations is a remarkable achievement. The author has succeeded in writing a thoroughly serious novel with strong intellectual threads via a set of related stories that can each be enjoyed at face value, just as stories, if that is what the reader wants. Writing rarely gets as sophisticated as this or indeed as enjoyable, since humour, often rather barbed, is always close to the surface. Between The Assassinations is a wonderful achievement.
August 26, 2018
Definitely a 5-star read! In this book Adiga skilfully manages to convey a sense of the place and its people not by engaging in sociological analysis or selecting average human types but rather by fixing his gaze on the unusual, the out-of-the-ordinary and the unexpected.
The book is a collection of short stories centred around the Indian town of Kittur. Each story is about a different character, which initially creates a sense of disconnection; however as you read on you realise that the town itself is the canvas on which storylines criss-cross. There's a lot about caste in India and how it affects human relationships, and also about corruption, esp. among state officials. The stories feel slightly unfinished in the sense that it's not entirely clear why the characters act in the way that they do, but I think that's in line with a lot of recent short story writing where conveying a powerful sense about a character and/or place is more important than providing a clear and unambiguous resolution.
The stories themselves are involving and strangely fascinating. There seems to be a connecting thread that runs through the stories: a personal quest for purity that sets the main characters. Cast in an uncaring world, these characters seem to have a will and a mind of their own despite often being the lowliest of the low. I was especially touched by the story about the conductor on the No. 5 bus -- a boy who arrives at Kittur only to be shunned by his uncle, who instead of taking him in, lets him live on the streets and go hungry. Despite the Dickensian element, the story is not sentimental. Out of personal ingenuity the boy rises to the coveted position of conductor on bus No. 5. And then, all of a sudden, he blows everything: he turns against his patron and loses the position of conductor (and at the same time his means of livelihood). This happens without explanation or obvious reason why, possibly out of some secret act of rebellion or malaise of the soul. This pattern is repeated in many of the stories; rather than keep their heads down, lie low, know their place, the characters throw everything they strove for to the winds, as if driven by a strong moral code or a deep sense of integrity which goes against customary morals.
Overall, I'm finding that I'm learning a lot about contemporary India, a country that's rising fast to become one of the world's superpowers. Very much looking forward to reading Adiga's award-winning The White Tiger.
The book is a collection of short stories centred around the Indian town of Kittur. Each story is about a different character, which initially creates a sense of disconnection; however as you read on you realise that the town itself is the canvas on which storylines criss-cross. There's a lot about caste in India and how it affects human relationships, and also about corruption, esp. among state officials. The stories feel slightly unfinished in the sense that it's not entirely clear why the characters act in the way that they do, but I think that's in line with a lot of recent short story writing where conveying a powerful sense about a character and/or place is more important than providing a clear and unambiguous resolution.
The stories themselves are involving and strangely fascinating. There seems to be a connecting thread that runs through the stories: a personal quest for purity that sets the main characters. Cast in an uncaring world, these characters seem to have a will and a mind of their own despite often being the lowliest of the low. I was especially touched by the story about the conductor on the No. 5 bus -- a boy who arrives at Kittur only to be shunned by his uncle, who instead of taking him in, lets him live on the streets and go hungry. Despite the Dickensian element, the story is not sentimental. Out of personal ingenuity the boy rises to the coveted position of conductor on bus No. 5. And then, all of a sudden, he blows everything: he turns against his patron and loses the position of conductor (and at the same time his means of livelihood). This happens without explanation or obvious reason why, possibly out of some secret act of rebellion or malaise of the soul. This pattern is repeated in many of the stories; rather than keep their heads down, lie low, know their place, the characters throw everything they strove for to the winds, as if driven by a strong moral code or a deep sense of integrity which goes against customary morals.
Overall, I'm finding that I'm learning a lot about contemporary India, a country that's rising fast to become one of the world's superpowers. Very much looking forward to reading Adiga's award-winning The White Tiger.
September 2, 2016
A breathtakingly realistic combination of short stories that conspire together to imprint in your mind the story of Kittur in 80s through the army of characters that populate this allegedly fictional town.
If you wanna read about the real India, this is the book to go to.
If you wanna read about the real India, this is the book to go to.
November 6, 2018
Caste, caste, and more caste.
Review to follow soon...
Review to follow soon...
September 16, 2012
Between the Assassinations
- Aravind Adiga
From a well praised author of the book The White Tiger, comes Between the Assassinations. At first glance, the book is luring, it seems to prompt secrecy and mysteries...but instead has a deeper theme - Corruption!
The stories in this book are set in Kittur, Karnataka(never heard of it before). I thought this book would be light and entertaining like Tamasha in Bandargaon(a delightful read) by Navneet Jagannathan but if truth be told, I put this book at least wanted read.
For me, a book should be loyal in words its speaks, delicate in plot, inspiring though characters and gripping nevertheless. This book failed before my views, with words so low and cheap; literally made me throw it away! The plot? I felt like seeing all these corrupted tales through the eyes of a sinned ghost who knows all terms, wandering Kittur. Characters are the worst, they have no morals nor dignity. Pseudonymous Bosch was right in saying, "Being an author is being a dictator" but here, this power has been misused.
I would have given up on the book, it was NOT gripping...I just finished it for the sake of never-leaving-a-book-uncompleted, it was walking through a tunnel full of corruption, without an end or conclusion.
The book seemed to talk about all the three major religions of India through resentful eyes, I didn't like that. Like saying a Pathan was not to be meddled with. Humoring the idol of baby Krishna, and portraying Christ in an unruly way...It tells a tales of a banned book..I do wonder why this book is NOT BANNED?
- Aravind Adiga
From a well praised author of the book The White Tiger, comes Between the Assassinations. At first glance, the book is luring, it seems to prompt secrecy and mysteries...but instead has a deeper theme - Corruption!
The stories in this book are set in Kittur, Karnataka(never heard of it before). I thought this book would be light and entertaining like Tamasha in Bandargaon(a delightful read) by Navneet Jagannathan but if truth be told, I put this book at least wanted read.
For me, a book should be loyal in words its speaks, delicate in plot, inspiring though characters and gripping nevertheless. This book failed before my views, with words so low and cheap; literally made me throw it away! The plot? I felt like seeing all these corrupted tales through the eyes of a sinned ghost who knows all terms, wandering Kittur. Characters are the worst, they have no morals nor dignity. Pseudonymous Bosch was right in saying, "Being an author is being a dictator" but here, this power has been misused.
I would have given up on the book, it was NOT gripping...I just finished it for the sake of never-leaving-a-book-uncompleted, it was walking through a tunnel full of corruption, without an end or conclusion.
The book seemed to talk about all the three major religions of India through resentful eyes, I didn't like that. Like saying a Pathan was not to be meddled with. Humoring the idol of baby Krishna, and portraying Christ in an unruly way...It tells a tales of a banned book..I do wonder why this book is NOT BANNED?
February 22, 2024
4.5 stars. An interesting, generally sad, vividly written collection of short stories about ordinary Indians, set during the period 1984 to 1991, between the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and her son, Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. The stories take place in the fictitious town of Kitty in southwest India. Each story shows an individual’s way of life, involving the negative aspects of unfairness in the caste system. Each individual is hard done by.
I felt an empathy towards all the characters. I enjoyed every story. Here is a brief summary of some of the stories:
The Brahmin woman who is no longer of marriageable age and has to work as a servant in one household after another. The salesman of ‘potions’ who finds himself trying to help a young man with a sexually transmitted disease. A 12 year old boy who starts misbehaving after a fair skinned stranger treats him with dignity and warmth. A 50 year old man who falls in love with a young poor woman, whom he cannot afford to wed.
A very good read with interesting characters and good plot momentum in all the stories, providing information on Indian culture.
This book was first published in 2008.
I felt an empathy towards all the characters. I enjoyed every story. Here is a brief summary of some of the stories:
The Brahmin woman who is no longer of marriageable age and has to work as a servant in one household after another. The salesman of ‘potions’ who finds himself trying to help a young man with a sexually transmitted disease. A 12 year old boy who starts misbehaving after a fair skinned stranger treats him with dignity and warmth. A 50 year old man who falls in love with a young poor woman, whom he cannot afford to wed.
A very good read with interesting characters and good plot momentum in all the stories, providing information on Indian culture.
This book was first published in 2008.
December 30, 2011
I understand why Aravind Adiga continues to live in Mumbai; he is sitting on an endless mine of literary material that would keep him writing into a ripe old age. Although never advertized as such, this is a collection of short stories connected only by locale, the city of Kittur, a microcosm of Mother India with it all its fables and foibles.
And so Adiga takes us on a seven-day tour of Kittur, unearthing its myriad denizens and their bizarre situations: from low castes to Brahmins, violent school teachers to anarchist students, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, bicycle wallahs, crime kingpins, immigrants from the countryside sleeping on the streets, and child beggars. The situations are graphic and unsanitary: a coolie sticking a cow dung-laced finger in anger into a prostitute’s mouth while she services another customer, the factory owner showing his contempt for a corrupt tax collector by mixing him Red Label Scotch stirred with his own shitty finger; after awhile the shock-factor becomes predictable and pales. The tour is supposed to mirror events taking place in the seven years between the assassinations of Mrs Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, although I saw very little parallel.
The messages however, are very strong: communism is being trumped by capitalism, caste lines shall not be crossed even though they are blurring in a changing India, getting married apparently stabilizes a man, a childless woman is a disgrace to her family, and those in the lower depths like our bicycle wallah will die from exhaustion before they reach the age of 40. Fraud is everywhere and circular – everyone is being screwed by everyone else – Adiga claims India to be the world champion in black marketing, counterfeiting and corruption. A few brave ones— the journalist who tries to write one article a day with the truth and goes mad in the attempt, and the Maupassant wannabe who creates characters who do not want but falls for a young woman and succumbs to desire—try to stem the tide and are consumed in India’s relentless march to become a global economic powerhouse.
I found the writing style clumsy in certain stories and colloquial – these stories were probably written over a long period of time as the author evolved into his current Booker-winning stature.
Living among tycoons and terrorists can be a source for interesting fiction, but I wonder what Adiga’s point is. Is it to shock us with insights into this subterranean culture that westerners would find titillating and escapist as the vampire genre or Chuck Palahniuk? Or is it to warn us that as India globalizes, and the world normalizes to the lowest common denominator, the underbelly of a rampant capitalist country, such as Kittur, could one day be our reality as well? Viewed from the latter perspective, this book takes on a cautionary and chilling aspect and is worth the read.
And so Adiga takes us on a seven-day tour of Kittur, unearthing its myriad denizens and their bizarre situations: from low castes to Brahmins, violent school teachers to anarchist students, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, bicycle wallahs, crime kingpins, immigrants from the countryside sleeping on the streets, and child beggars. The situations are graphic and unsanitary: a coolie sticking a cow dung-laced finger in anger into a prostitute’s mouth while she services another customer, the factory owner showing his contempt for a corrupt tax collector by mixing him Red Label Scotch stirred with his own shitty finger; after awhile the shock-factor becomes predictable and pales. The tour is supposed to mirror events taking place in the seven years between the assassinations of Mrs Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, although I saw very little parallel.
The messages however, are very strong: communism is being trumped by capitalism, caste lines shall not be crossed even though they are blurring in a changing India, getting married apparently stabilizes a man, a childless woman is a disgrace to her family, and those in the lower depths like our bicycle wallah will die from exhaustion before they reach the age of 40. Fraud is everywhere and circular – everyone is being screwed by everyone else – Adiga claims India to be the world champion in black marketing, counterfeiting and corruption. A few brave ones— the journalist who tries to write one article a day with the truth and goes mad in the attempt, and the Maupassant wannabe who creates characters who do not want but falls for a young woman and succumbs to desire—try to stem the tide and are consumed in India’s relentless march to become a global economic powerhouse.
I found the writing style clumsy in certain stories and colloquial – these stories were probably written over a long period of time as the author evolved into his current Booker-winning stature.
Living among tycoons and terrorists can be a source for interesting fiction, but I wonder what Adiga’s point is. Is it to shock us with insights into this subterranean culture that westerners would find titillating and escapist as the vampire genre or Chuck Palahniuk? Or is it to warn us that as India globalizes, and the world normalizes to the lowest common denominator, the underbelly of a rampant capitalist country, such as Kittur, could one day be our reality as well? Viewed from the latter perspective, this book takes on a cautionary and chilling aspect and is worth the read.
May 11, 2018
Definitely one of the most entertaining and engrossing audiobooks that have livened up my daily commute in the last year. I also loved "The White Tiger" when I read it, but I feel this book provides even more bang-for-the-buck with a relentlessly entertaining series of short stories that work well for someone such as myself looking to digest the material a half-an-hour on the 403 at a time.
Mr. Aravind is a talented storyteller and creator of memorable characters, and the narration by Mr. Nayyar effectively evokes the inner life and desires of a wide range of characters whose personal beliefs and circumstances are often worlds apart even though they inhabit the same small town in the turbulent India of the 1980s.
Mr. Aravind is a talented storyteller and creator of memorable characters, and the narration by Mr. Nayyar effectively evokes the inner life and desires of a wide range of characters whose personal beliefs and circumstances are often worlds apart even though they inhabit the same small town in the turbulent India of the 1980s.
January 9, 2010
Between the Assassinations is really good. It's quite a bit different from Adiga's earlier work White Tiger. Though portions of the story are told through first person narration, this book deviates significantly from the formula he very successfully used in the past. The characters in this book never meet. Their only connection is the city in which they live. The novel is told through vignettes which reveal the intricate social and political climates operating in the fictionalized city of Kittur and is organized spatially rather than chronologically. Very good read!
July 1, 2019
I’ve been thinking a lot about this book and I have to say it very much could be the perfect sampler to the Raw experience of Indian Lit.
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#theguywiththebookreview presents Between The Assassinations by Aravind Adiga.
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The first book I read by Adiga was the very much critically acclaimed and Man Booker Prize Winner, The White Tiger.
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Surprisingly this book was actually written by Adiga before that one but published later.
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Between The Assassinations is a collection of short stories based in Kittur, India and encompasses a wide range of characters from different parts of its society which make for a very intriguing experience when these characters come together.
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Each type of character seems to have been researched meticulously and Adiga manages to touch a plethora of topics, from terrorism to casteism to poverty and corruption. Some of the short stories mildly intermingle to give them a much richer experience which sometimes short stories might lack.
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There are many books based in India which make for great picks to start with Indian Lit but if you’re undecided on where to start, I’d definitely recommend this book or The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
.
#theguywiththebookreview presents Between The Assassinations by Aravind Adiga.
.
The first book I read by Adiga was the very much critically acclaimed and Man Booker Prize Winner, The White Tiger.
.
Surprisingly this book was actually written by Adiga before that one but published later.
.
Between The Assassinations is a collection of short stories based in Kittur, India and encompasses a wide range of characters from different parts of its society which make for a very intriguing experience when these characters come together.
.
Each type of character seems to have been researched meticulously and Adiga manages to touch a plethora of topics, from terrorism to casteism to poverty and corruption. Some of the short stories mildly intermingle to give them a much richer experience which sometimes short stories might lack.
.
There are many books based in India which make for great picks to start with Indian Lit but if you’re undecided on where to start, I’d definitely recommend this book or The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
Read
February 9, 2017I didn't have a clue of what I would get from the book and even now, I am not sure if what I got is what I should have got. I have read Aravind s earlier book "The white Tiger" which had won him the Booker Prize. I had liked the book then and so the author was familiar. Also, the title had hinted at some sort of murder and possibly a whodunit type of story. I couldn't have been more wrong.
This book is all about an imaginary town by the name Kittur nestled on the coast, South of Goa and North of Calicut. It is almost like every other town with its quirkiness the traditions and the diversity that is so identifiable to any Indian town. The stage is set in the 80s, right between the Assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv Gandhi. The book gives a vivid description of the town and the lives of the people in the town and manages to hand hold you in getting to know them.
The book contains a myriad of characters. You get to see people of all walks of life. From a disciplinarian assistant head master to an alienated but affluent schoolboy, from a middle aged communist to an "I can sell whatever I can get and make you buy it" kind of conman salesman, from the children of a construction worker to a delivery man for a furniture retail firm, from a Brahmin housemaid who is still single at 55 to an idealistic journalist who is married to his profession, from an Islamic terrorist to an Islam boy who would not see through him and not take up the work he is given by the terrorist, from a rich housewife who lives a life of solitude to her employee who tries to find a way to her heart and in turn to her money, the book has it all and manages to bring the Indian world of the 80s to life. All religions, all classes of castes, rich and poor, everyone finds a mention in this canvas.
What made this book work for me was the way the characters were etched without being judgemental and by retaining their uniqueness. Some of it was stereotypical but when you are trying to portray a different era, you would have to stereotype a few things. There were lots of moments of poignancy and places where adding anything more would have made it redundant and hence reduced the beauty of the moment. This book has been structured as chapters with each chapter picking up a particular location in Kittur as backdrop and the characters would play their part in that backdrop. This book could have easily been called "The short story collections of Aravind Adiga" as there were no direct and obvious connections between characters from one chapter to another. There might be hidden connections which might jump out on a second reading but nothing appeared to me in the first reading. The ending sequence for some of the chapters are brilliant and the others are ordinary, however the one theme that can be seen right through is the air of melancholy surrounding most of the characters a d there are not much characters in this book that spreads an air of joy. Maybe that is how the life in a small town would have been in the 80s. May be not. But this town has been depicted like that. That said, there are a lot of places where the wicked humor and dark humor has worked out well. There were moments where I laughed, sympathized, empathized, got angry, got frustrated, felt sad but there was never a moment through the book where I felt bored. The author had managed to bring the town of Kittur to life and take me on a walk through the various locations in the town, meet the people and get to live with them.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. You can take a walk for a few miles in the book and continue the journey provided you like it. If you do not, you always have the option of jumping back to reality.
This book is all about an imaginary town by the name Kittur nestled on the coast, South of Goa and North of Calicut. It is almost like every other town with its quirkiness the traditions and the diversity that is so identifiable to any Indian town. The stage is set in the 80s, right between the Assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv Gandhi. The book gives a vivid description of the town and the lives of the people in the town and manages to hand hold you in getting to know them.
The book contains a myriad of characters. You get to see people of all walks of life. From a disciplinarian assistant head master to an alienated but affluent schoolboy, from a middle aged communist to an "I can sell whatever I can get and make you buy it" kind of conman salesman, from the children of a construction worker to a delivery man for a furniture retail firm, from a Brahmin housemaid who is still single at 55 to an idealistic journalist who is married to his profession, from an Islamic terrorist to an Islam boy who would not see through him and not take up the work he is given by the terrorist, from a rich housewife who lives a life of solitude to her employee who tries to find a way to her heart and in turn to her money, the book has it all and manages to bring the Indian world of the 80s to life. All religions, all classes of castes, rich and poor, everyone finds a mention in this canvas.
What made this book work for me was the way the characters were etched without being judgemental and by retaining their uniqueness. Some of it was stereotypical but when you are trying to portray a different era, you would have to stereotype a few things. There were lots of moments of poignancy and places where adding anything more would have made it redundant and hence reduced the beauty of the moment. This book has been structured as chapters with each chapter picking up a particular location in Kittur as backdrop and the characters would play their part in that backdrop. This book could have easily been called "The short story collections of Aravind Adiga" as there were no direct and obvious connections between characters from one chapter to another. There might be hidden connections which might jump out on a second reading but nothing appeared to me in the first reading. The ending sequence for some of the chapters are brilliant and the others are ordinary, however the one theme that can be seen right through is the air of melancholy surrounding most of the characters a d there are not much characters in this book that spreads an air of joy. Maybe that is how the life in a small town would have been in the 80s. May be not. But this town has been depicted like that. That said, there are a lot of places where the wicked humor and dark humor has worked out well. There were moments where I laughed, sympathized, empathized, got angry, got frustrated, felt sad but there was never a moment through the book where I felt bored. The author had managed to bring the town of Kittur to life and take me on a walk through the various locations in the town, meet the people and get to live with them.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. You can take a walk for a few miles in the book and continue the journey provided you like it. If you do not, you always have the option of jumping back to reality.
April 24, 2013
I haven't read Adiga's Booker-winning debut novel The White Tiger (yet, I should add). However, I've recently read at least two Indian novels - Farahad Zama's The Marriage Bureau for Rich People and Vikas Swarup's Q&A - that try to present the issues facing modern India for a Western audience. There's a lot of talk about the conflict between the old caste society and new "modern" values, clashes between different religions, the supposed but not all-encompassing rise from third-world poverty to a major economic power, etc, but in both cases they end up as simple fluff. Let's all just get along, and if you're lucky you'll win a lot of money and move out of the shack and be happy, and hey, here's a dance number in saris.
Not so in Between The Assassinations, a collection of 14 loosely connected short stories set in (a fictionalised version of) the city of Kittur. The assassinations referred to are the ones of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and 1991, and even though the book is divided into seven days, they're not necessarily presented in order. Adiga doesn't offer solutions or easy ways out; at best, he offers a black sense of humour. We get to meet 14 people from all walks of life, from beggars to rich industrialists - and when I say 14, I mean millions; because in setting every story in the same city, having the characters cross each others' paths, the fleeting but always present references to the larger world outside, we're never allowed to forget that they all make up a part of a much larger puzzle. That's just one of the rather delicious dark ironies in this; everyone knowing their place is part of their failure in escaping it.
Obviusly, some stories stand out more than others. Some are darkly funny (the wealthy low-caste school boy who thinks he's supposed to become a terrorist; the journalist who tries to tell the truth about corruption), others desperately grim (the bicycle kuli who realises his body is giving up at 30, and that every day he wastes more calories than he can buy with the money he earns), and some just depressingly realistic. Adiga sticks to a very limited third-person narration, taking us into the head of each protagonist (not that many of them are in a position to do much protagonisin'), having each story tell one character's truth only to move on to a different one with no clear moral.
And then there's the frame story: Adiga prefaces every section of the book as well as every story with a short, supposedly objective description of part of the city: here's the shopping district; here's the various churches, temples and mosques; here's the park; here's the adult cinema. There are fact sheets about population and chronology. And then he undercuts the tourist brochure-like descriptions of buildings and architecture with the lives of the people there, everything that keeps them there, the invisible but real patterns that make sure things don't change too much. "The untouchables are 90% of this town," say politicians trying to curry favour with them, while a fact sheet elsewhere in the book points out that they're nowhere near that many. Every story here can be read on its own; yet together, they start questioning each other, mistrusting each other, undercutting and trying to gain advantage over each other. Some fail. Some succeed, only to still find themselves trapped in a book with cheerful Indian colours on the jacket. And it begins, and ends, with people getting killed.
Not so in Between The Assassinations, a collection of 14 loosely connected short stories set in (a fictionalised version of) the city of Kittur. The assassinations referred to are the ones of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and 1991, and even though the book is divided into seven days, they're not necessarily presented in order. Adiga doesn't offer solutions or easy ways out; at best, he offers a black sense of humour. We get to meet 14 people from all walks of life, from beggars to rich industrialists - and when I say 14, I mean millions; because in setting every story in the same city, having the characters cross each others' paths, the fleeting but always present references to the larger world outside, we're never allowed to forget that they all make up a part of a much larger puzzle. That's just one of the rather delicious dark ironies in this; everyone knowing their place is part of their failure in escaping it.
Obviusly, some stories stand out more than others. Some are darkly funny (the wealthy low-caste school boy who thinks he's supposed to become a terrorist; the journalist who tries to tell the truth about corruption), others desperately grim (the bicycle kuli who realises his body is giving up at 30, and that every day he wastes more calories than he can buy with the money he earns), and some just depressingly realistic. Adiga sticks to a very limited third-person narration, taking us into the head of each protagonist (not that many of them are in a position to do much protagonisin'), having each story tell one character's truth only to move on to a different one with no clear moral.
And then there's the frame story: Adiga prefaces every section of the book as well as every story with a short, supposedly objective description of part of the city: here's the shopping district; here's the various churches, temples and mosques; here's the park; here's the adult cinema. There are fact sheets about population and chronology. And then he undercuts the tourist brochure-like descriptions of buildings and architecture with the lives of the people there, everything that keeps them there, the invisible but real patterns that make sure things don't change too much. "The untouchables are 90% of this town," say politicians trying to curry favour with them, while a fact sheet elsewhere in the book points out that they're nowhere near that many. Every story here can be read on its own; yet together, they start questioning each other, mistrusting each other, undercutting and trying to gain advantage over each other. Some fail. Some succeed, only to still find themselves trapped in a book with cheerful Indian colours on the jacket. And it begins, and ends, with people getting killed.
April 1, 2020
The protagonist of this book is Kittur and to a larger degree it is India - in all its madness and incomprehensibility. Your heart breaks to see the loss of innocence, the corruption of the good and the callousness of the hardened. We are all humans, aren't we? Thrown into the bin are the ideals of humanism. But aren't we all just subjects of our environment and likely to fall prey to the decay of civilization if we lived in Kittur.
The stories leap off the page as if you were witnessing first hand the calamaties of the Indian people. A lot of character types are covered. The poor and deceitful, the religiously reviled, the upper-class spoiled brats, the ones who abstain from the chaos, those squarely in the midst of it, families who are exploiting each other, the feminine power dynamic, the uneducated, the naive and the rational capitalists.
What a great usage of people and characters from this fictitious world. The most riveting stories are of those people who come to realize they are living their lives under a false impression. The main message is this: Don't trust ideas. They will be shattered.
The stories leap off the page as if you were witnessing first hand the calamaties of the Indian people. A lot of character types are covered. The poor and deceitful, the religiously reviled, the upper-class spoiled brats, the ones who abstain from the chaos, those squarely in the midst of it, families who are exploiting each other, the feminine power dynamic, the uneducated, the naive and the rational capitalists.
What a great usage of people and characters from this fictitious world. The most riveting stories are of those people who come to realize they are living their lives under a false impression. The main message is this: Don't trust ideas. They will be shattered.
April 24, 2017
It did not seem that this was a collection of stories, not a single novel, when I bought this book. The book contains, in the form of short stories, glimpses of the lives, predominantly sad, of ordinary citizens living in an ordinary south indian coastal town, in the seven-year period between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. The best thing about this book is the way Adiga paints the town and the people and everything else; the reader can actually see, smell and feel the life in the town of Kittur. Apart from that, most of the stories do not have any fixed conclusions, the reader is left to make his own. The stories are disturbing in their showcase of poverty, exploitation and corruption. In all, it is a painful set of stories, made readable by the author's skill in bringing the town to life through written words.
November 5, 2012
I liked this book - a gentle meander through a ictional Indian town. Through a series of short it provided an insight into daily life.
Well worth a read
Well worth a read
November 1, 2012
Er, Indian noir?
July 26, 2016
So ridiculously rich--but it burns the fat right out of you, it's so damn fierce.
This is Adiga's second book. And while his first won the prestigious Man Booker prize, I think reviewers did not really serve it well. I mean, White Tiger, and Between the Assassinations, both are rooted in the history and sociology of contemporary India--and this rootedness is important--too often White Tiger was reduced to just a report on Indian current affairs. Even when reviewers noted the literary elements, they were read purely in the service of evaluating his stance on modern India: what do rivers and oceans say about his interpretation of Indian culture. Good reviewers would never think to reduce a book on some part of America, by a white American, to pure social studies essay. It's a novel, after all.
Then there was Tony D'Souza's ridiculously bad review of White Tiger in the Washignton Post. (I looked it up because it was referred to on the back of this book.) I don't know if D'Souza just had no control of his language, if his universe of references were so limited, or if he was penning some kind of quiet evisceration--but the review was horrible. It completely missed the significance of a central event, wished the book could be more Orwellian--not sure what that meant--but, worse, could only think to compare it to Pahlaniuk--because the main character took the time to spell out his philosophical views--and the Nanny Diaries (!) because it exposed the hypocrisy of the characters. Let me say that again, with extra exclamation points: the gee-dee Nanny Diaries!!!!
If one is inclined to mis-read Adiga, this book will again provide plenty of grist for that wonky mill. Adiga covers some of the same ground--(mostly) contemporary India, plenty of hypocrisy and exploitation. So, go ahead, dismiss this as a college essay on India, a land of contrasts, if you want. But then you're missing so much. Not just the complexity of Adiga's view of the world, but that this is a genuinely great work of literature. It may even be more approachable--for a reader--than White Tiger.
Between the Assassinations is set in an invented southern India city in the years 1984-1991: that is, between the assassinations of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and (her son) Rajiv Gandhi. The book is divided into seven days, with chapters devoted to the morning or evening of the days, and each section introduced by a paragraph or so that reads as if it is from a travel book. (There are also a couple of interpolated chapters that are completely from this presumed book.) The chapters, too, are coupled to specific places within the city. The days, though, are not literal days--what happens in each chapter can take a day or days or weeks. They are years: seven years, seven days. So this isn't just a novel, it's a story of genesis, the Biblical seven days.
Almost none of the characters recur from one chapter to another. Rather, the connections between the different stories are more subtle, but still charged--maybe even more charged for the occult connections. Thus, one chapter mentions the Catholic School for boys, and the next is set within it. One chapter mentions DDT, and the next is about the man who sprays for mosquitos. Surnames, though, do reappear, repeatedly, giving a sense of a network of people, distantly related, perhaps, but still related.
I get the sense that Adiga might be settling some personal scores. One name that shows up three times is D'Souza. I suspect that one instance of this may be a reference to the conservative author Dinesh D'Souza. In this case, Daryl D'Souza is a horrible hypocrite. In another, I think he's taking aim at ole Tony: Miguel D'Souza is a solicitous shit who cannot recognize the power of literature and ends up, drunkenly, beating a man who does, breaking his legs, but underestimating him. In a book as vast as this one, there are probably other inside references like this, I just don't recognize them.
Because make no mistake, in the 320+ pages of this novel--or collection of related stories--there is a huge cast of characters, scores, if not a hundred. What is so remarkable about the book is that each chapter could be expanded to be a whole book. Adiga is that good. His voice only changes a few times, one story to the next, but he is in so much control of his stories, can suggest enormities in a few paragraphs, packs insights into paragraphs. He jumps from cast to cast, religion to religion, social level to social level, and is never less than empathetic. The book opens with the tale of a Muslim Adam (He's dust-covered, just as Adam is made from dust) and ends with a frustrated writer who wants to tell naturalistic tales of the people, but ends up exploiting them, an acknowledgment of his own position. In between are stories alternately infuriating and heartbreaking, with graces of humor and love, even genuine courage, though these are not the dominant behaviors.
There's something Dickensian here, in the vastness and consideration of class, but without the exaggeration; there's something of García Márquez here, especially One Hundred Years of Solitude, what with the writing of a modern genesis, but without the magical realism. Adiga is an old-fashioned naturalist--an increasingly rare species in this era of the MFA novelist and the fetishization of quirk--but such an excellent practitioner it feels new, fresh, important.
Really, really excellent.
This is Adiga's second book. And while his first won the prestigious Man Booker prize, I think reviewers did not really serve it well. I mean, White Tiger, and Between the Assassinations, both are rooted in the history and sociology of contemporary India--and this rootedness is important--too often White Tiger was reduced to just a report on Indian current affairs. Even when reviewers noted the literary elements, they were read purely in the service of evaluating his stance on modern India: what do rivers and oceans say about his interpretation of Indian culture. Good reviewers would never think to reduce a book on some part of America, by a white American, to pure social studies essay. It's a novel, after all.
Then there was Tony D'Souza's ridiculously bad review of White Tiger in the Washignton Post. (I looked it up because it was referred to on the back of this book.) I don't know if D'Souza just had no control of his language, if his universe of references were so limited, or if he was penning some kind of quiet evisceration--but the review was horrible. It completely missed the significance of a central event, wished the book could be more Orwellian--not sure what that meant--but, worse, could only think to compare it to Pahlaniuk--because the main character took the time to spell out his philosophical views--and the Nanny Diaries (!) because it exposed the hypocrisy of the characters. Let me say that again, with extra exclamation points: the gee-dee Nanny Diaries!!!!
If one is inclined to mis-read Adiga, this book will again provide plenty of grist for that wonky mill. Adiga covers some of the same ground--(mostly) contemporary India, plenty of hypocrisy and exploitation. So, go ahead, dismiss this as a college essay on India, a land of contrasts, if you want. But then you're missing so much. Not just the complexity of Adiga's view of the world, but that this is a genuinely great work of literature. It may even be more approachable--for a reader--than White Tiger.
Between the Assassinations is set in an invented southern India city in the years 1984-1991: that is, between the assassinations of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and (her son) Rajiv Gandhi. The book is divided into seven days, with chapters devoted to the morning or evening of the days, and each section introduced by a paragraph or so that reads as if it is from a travel book. (There are also a couple of interpolated chapters that are completely from this presumed book.) The chapters, too, are coupled to specific places within the city. The days, though, are not literal days--what happens in each chapter can take a day or days or weeks. They are years: seven years, seven days. So this isn't just a novel, it's a story of genesis, the Biblical seven days.
Almost none of the characters recur from one chapter to another. Rather, the connections between the different stories are more subtle, but still charged--maybe even more charged for the occult connections. Thus, one chapter mentions the Catholic School for boys, and the next is set within it. One chapter mentions DDT, and the next is about the man who sprays for mosquitos. Surnames, though, do reappear, repeatedly, giving a sense of a network of people, distantly related, perhaps, but still related.
I get the sense that Adiga might be settling some personal scores. One name that shows up three times is D'Souza. I suspect that one instance of this may be a reference to the conservative author Dinesh D'Souza. In this case, Daryl D'Souza is a horrible hypocrite. In another, I think he's taking aim at ole Tony: Miguel D'Souza is a solicitous shit who cannot recognize the power of literature and ends up, drunkenly, beating a man who does, breaking his legs, but underestimating him. In a book as vast as this one, there are probably other inside references like this, I just don't recognize them.
Because make no mistake, in the 320+ pages of this novel--or collection of related stories--there is a huge cast of characters, scores, if not a hundred. What is so remarkable about the book is that each chapter could be expanded to be a whole book. Adiga is that good. His voice only changes a few times, one story to the next, but he is in so much control of his stories, can suggest enormities in a few paragraphs, packs insights into paragraphs. He jumps from cast to cast, religion to religion, social level to social level, and is never less than empathetic. The book opens with the tale of a Muslim Adam (He's dust-covered, just as Adam is made from dust) and ends with a frustrated writer who wants to tell naturalistic tales of the people, but ends up exploiting them, an acknowledgment of his own position. In between are stories alternately infuriating and heartbreaking, with graces of humor and love, even genuine courage, though these are not the dominant behaviors.
There's something Dickensian here, in the vastness and consideration of class, but without the exaggeration; there's something of García Márquez here, especially One Hundred Years of Solitude, what with the writing of a modern genesis, but without the magical realism. Adiga is an old-fashioned naturalist--an increasingly rare species in this era of the MFA novelist and the fetishization of quirk--but such an excellent practitioner it feels new, fresh, important.
Really, really excellent.
dnf
September 19, 2022sigh this was fun at first but it just. got boring?? dnf @ 160 pages
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