Planes, Trains and Auto Rickshaws by Laura Pederson

Title: Planes, Train, and Auto-Rickshaws: A Journey Through Modern India by Laura Pedersen
Published May 29, 2012; paperback, 224 pages
Genre: travel memoir
Source: Authors on the Web

"If you're looking to experience ancient mystical India, then the holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the famous Ganges (aka Ganga) River is the place to go. Located five hundred miles southeast of Delhi, there are daily one-hour flights, or the Shiv Ganga Express train leaves every evening at 6:45 p.m. and arrives at 7:30 a.m. the following morning." ( p. 57)

About: India today is a nation caught between the rich heritage of its past and the great economic potential of its future. Journalist and author Laura Pedersen reveals the tensions and contradictions facing the emerging world power. In particular, Pedersen explores the roles of women and children in India today . Part travelogue, part history, and part cultural reflection, Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws provides an intimate glimpse of a nation at its turning point. (book description)

Laura Pedersen has written for The New York Times and is the author of several books. In 1994 President Clinton honored her as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans. She writes for several well-known comedians and lives in New York City.

Book Review: The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair

The Thing About Thugs

Title: The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair
Published July 24, 2012; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Genre: Victorian suspense, literary fiction

Book description: A novel of a young Indian man’s misadventures in Victorian London as the city is racked by a series of murders.

In a small Bihari village in India, Captain William Meadows finds Amir Ali, just the man to further his research and study of the shape of skulls. Ali is a  reformed member of the infamous Thugee cult, which gave the name to the English word "thug." After Ali travels to England to work for Meadows, a killer begins serial attacks in London, and suspicion naturally falls on Ali, the former “thug.” With help from other immigrants and a shrewd Punjabi woman, Ali attempts to save himself and end the gruesome murders.

 The Thing about Thugs was short-listed for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize.

My thoughts: Khair's writing at the beginning of the book reminds me of that of Charles Dickens. This is praise, as I love Dickens!  Amir Ali's unearthing of graveyard bodies for their skulls took me back to Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities and a similar graveyard scene. As this book is set in the same time period, Victorian England and the 19th century, the style of writing is well suited to the story.

There are three different narrators and story lines in the book, but I had to work harder than I normally like to keep them straight and to connect the stories. There is the first person narrator of the novel in the present time; there is the voice of William Meadow in his notes and interviews with Amir Ali during his research in India, and there are the personal letters of Amir Ali baring his soul about the murder of his family in India and other events.

What I came away with from the book is the contrast and similarities between the "thugs" of 19th century India and the underworld of Victorian England. The Thugee cult existed to perform ritual murder; in Victorian England murder was committed but for more personal reasons, for profit or through extreme perversity. The fact that suspicion fell right away on Amir Ali the "thug" when people were being killed and beheaded in London by a serial killer or killers was perhaps meant to show some blindness on the part of the Londoners about what could go on in their own society.

Amir Ali, the central character in the novel, is well developed. We know about him and his background through his letters and through Meadows' interviews with him in India and also through the omniscient narrator of the book.

I recommend The Thing about Thugs for those interested in Indian history, the Thugee cult, and for those who want to read a good Victorian novel of suspense.

Tabish Khair is an award-winning poet, journalist, critic, educator and novelist. A citizen of India, he lives in Denmark and teaches literature at Aarhus University. His website is http://www.tabishkhair.co.uk/

For more reviews of  The Thing About Thugs,
visit the TLC blog tour. I received a complimentary ARC of this book for review.

Sunday Salon: Books Set in Asia

Welcome to the Sunday Salon.

I was really happy to receive two surprise books yesterday, thanks to the publishers, both novels set in India.

The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall will be released July 10, 2012 by Simon and Schuster. It's a mystery novel set in New Delhi. I've read The Case of the Missing Servant, the first in the series, and really enjoyed the main character, India's P.I. Vish Puri.

I received the ARC of Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes by Betsy Woodman, the first in a planned series of books featuring Jana Bibi, her chatty parrot, and her housekeeper, living in Hamara Nagar, India. The book will be released July 17, 2012 by Henry Holt.

I'm in the middle of reading
Mingmei Yip's Skeleton Women, a novel set in early 1930s Shanghai,
finished The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam, set in the Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and
finished The Fear Artist (A Poke Rafferty Thriller) by Timothy Hallinan, a thriller set in Bangkok.

I plan to write reviews of the above three but may not post two of them till their release dates in the U.S! These books are going to take some thinking to review; they are pretty complex, with complex settings, and complex situations and characters. But I think I'll enjoy doing it.

What's on your plate for the next couple of weeks?

Book Review: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Genre: Historical fiction
Paperback, 530 pages
Published May 1st 2008 by John Murray (first published 2008)
Source: Library
Rating: 4 of 5

Comments: My husband listened eagerly to the entire audio book version. That's a pretty good endorsement. He was somewhat disappointed though by the ending, as there were loose ends not tied up. He felt the author didn't quite know what to do with all the myriad characters he created in this awesome historical drama. He'll be glad to know that Sea of Poppies is only the first in the Ibis trilogy, and that the story is not over.

I was intrigued by the myriad accents put on by the eBook reader, Phil Gigante, and by the pidgin and Anglo-Indian words used in 19th century India. Gigante's voice versatility gave color and immediacy to the reading of the novel.

Goodreads book description: "At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations.

The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of China. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive -- a masterpiece from one of the world’s finest novelists."

The novel  is a Man Booker Prize nominee (2008).

© Harvee Lau 2011