India

The village of Teetarpur, on the outskirts of Delhi, has been known for nothing for decades. Grittiness yes, but no crimes, no scandals. Until the unthinkable happens and an eight-year-old girl, Munia, is murdered, discovered hanging from the branch of a tree. Munia may have been shy, but she was much loved by her father, the widowed Chand, and the rest of her community. Part police procedural, part literary thriller, this beautifully written narrative brings rural India to life. The novel is told in the third person, with vivid characters richly developed and time that moves back and forth as we see Chand in his youth, living by the Yamuna, the black river of the book’s title. We follow local inspector Ombir Singh, under pressure from the rich and the political elite to resolve the killing, and Chand, calm on the exterior, but whose blood boils with revenge, not trusting the police. Roy is a journalist, and it’s tempting to attribute that to what makes this book so magnificently successful: the range of society, the moral complexity of many of the characters, and the terrifying brutality. Sure to be one of the best books of the year.

“With most first times, you don’t really know it’s the beginning of something,” explains Indian surgeon Dr. Kaiser Shah in a letter to his estranged daughter as he prepares for her to visit. And so it is with the practice that engulfed and destroyed Dr. K’s professional life in an unnamed oil-rich country. The task in question—you must remember, he says, it wasn’t his whole job!—is never mentioned directly, and certainly not described, with the doctor convincing himself ever harder that his secrecy is motivated by benevolence toward his lessors. The punishment for stealing is hand amputation, and before he began “helping out Corrections from time to time,” the procedure was much worse. The story of his involvement in this horror, and how it slowly eats his family life, friendships, and any sense of an inner life, is absorbing; adding a striking air is the doctor’s struggle toward self-acceptance in his letters to his daughter. Extremes underlie the violence here: Dr. K’s quiet sycophancy toward his superiors compared to his friend/rival’s gluttony; his love for his daughter compared to her disgust at his work; his initial bootlicking acceptance of the amputation work compared to his feelings about it after a shocking pivot. Those who enjoy an introspective read are the audience for this one, and they will want to go back to Waheed’s award-winning debut, The Collaborator, for more from this author.

Black River

Tell Her Everything