Sacred Games

What Booksellers Are Saying About Sacred Games

"My god, what a book. I love the way that the characters fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and their stories fall into place, piece by piece. I love the way that violence and politics and terror are woven into the plot without sacrificing any of the other threads, and the way that Bombay becomes the central character. I can't wait to sell it."
--Janet Brown, Elliott Bay Books, Seattle

"Want to get lost in a big, sprawling hardcore mystery? Pick up the delicious new novel by Vikram Chandra and revel in outsized gangsters, jaded policemen and a story that ranges in history from the separation of India and Pakistan to modern terrorism. This is a police procedural like none encountered in American or British writing. Chandra's subcontinent teems with all of the complexities of modern and ancient societies, wealth and poverty, crime and justice. Read long and enjoy!
--Jane Jacobs, Porter Square Books

"Sacred Games has changed the way I view the world. For one thing there is almost no mention of the USA--a corrective to the assumption that "it's all about us." For another, when I watch the news I now see it as floating on top of what's really going on--a great roiling stew of gun-running, drug and money smuggling, and an underworld that is far more influential than I want to believe. Oh, and did I mention it has a riveting plot and characters you can't forget?"
-- Lilla Weinberger, Reader's Books

"This intense epic from India will inevitably be compared to The Godfather, but I think the comparisons can only be made on the surface level. Yes, this is a story about a criminal overlord in Mumbai and the policeman who brings him down. But aside from these two great characters, Chandra has included a vast array of fascinating characters including gangsters, prostitutes, movie stars, and everyday families, as well as a gripping storyline. Told in alternating chapters from the two main characters' perspectives, we're thrown into the streets of India with vivid descriptions that call to mind Charles Dickens. Don't let the length intimidate you either---you'll be pulled in so quickly that by the time you reach the 900th page, you'll wish there more."
-- Megan Sullivan, Harvard Bookshop

"It has been a long time since a novel has gripped me from the first sentence. It is Victorian in scope and also surreal in description. Chandra's prose leaves me with a quiet presence. It is great storytelling transcended by both universal and very contemporary concerns."
--Micheal Fraser, Joseph Beth Books, Cincinnati

"This majestic sprawling novel India verifies the brilliance of Vikram Chandra. While the plot revolves around a policeman and a gangster, the book both defies and transcends genre as its lush evocative prose create a novel that is sublime."- Bill Cusumano, Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor "With a gorgeous prose style, completely engaging characters and a twisting, suspenseful plot, this is a novel that seems short at 900 pages! After the lives of a Sikh policeman and a Mumbai gangster intersect in an unexpected way, we hear the gangster's story in his own words, while following the policeman's life forward through surprising events. An absolutely wonderful book!"
--Carol Schneck, Schuler Books, Grand Rapids

"A lush, sprawling novel of lives both large and small...beautifully written and constructed, this exceptional novel is both fast moving and profound. It is an impressive work of surprising and sublime resonance which will remains with the reader long after the last page is turned"
--Tova Beisner, Brown U. Bookstore, Providence

"The story is told with such richness and complexity of character that I didn't want it to ever end."
--Mark Laframbroise, Politics &Prose Bookstore, Wash., DC

"Historical detail sometimes overwhelms a novel and leaves you bored. Not so with Sacred Games. The story was riveting and the history of the culture informative. The characters were so well drawn, I had trouble letting them go."
--Sue Tircuit, Cody's, Berkeley

"A sprawling, exuberant, old-fashioned story, detailing the intertwined lives of the gangsters of modern Mumbai. Chandra peppers his narrative with Hindi words that give one a sense of closeness with the characters. Detailing the dectectives and criminals, schemers and observers of this world, he has created an engaging novel that searches for moral warmth in a time of betrayal and greed."
--Lara Whitney, City Lights, San Francisco

"Fabulous! Wwhat a great reading experience, intimate and over-the-top at the same time. This is going to be a lot of fun to sell, and perfect for those long nights in January."
--Tobias Cox, Three Lives , NY

"Sacred Games is a brilliant crime epic which impressively balances a literary detective and gangster story with a cinematically violent tale of contemporary Bombay. One of Chandra's most remarkable achievements amidst this novel of marvels is his ability to turn mundane moments into extraordinary ones, as a father's lovingly ritualized inquiries of his sons' hygiene is just as compelling as far higher octane scenes of crime and gang wars. The overall effect for the reader is to have the breadth and depth of Bombay's peoples exposed and made immediate, highlighting the manner in which the city's impressive violence touches all in Chandra's perfect circle."
-- Jason Picone, Powell's Books

"Incredibly engaging and rich … It will appeal to men, women and readers of literary fiction as well as of good crime novelists."
--Tim Huggins, Newtonville Books, MA

"Chandra grants his reader a voyeuristic peak into the thoughts of a policeman and the gangster he pursues, while he reveals the histories and motivations of the members of his supporting cast. Set in the richly complex world of modern day India, this is a masterfully-crafted tale of intrigue where no one is purely innocent, and no one is without virtue."
-- Jennifer McPheeters, Sarasota News & Books

"One of the best novels I've read in a long time."
-- Karl Pohrt, Shaman Drum, Ann Arbor

"I loved, loved, and loved it. What a fabulous opening it has! …The good, the bad and the ugly are all through the book, but Chandra writes about them with such affection and regard that it's impossible not to care about them. In that way it was so much like Suitable Boy…Thank you for bringing it to me!"
--Felice Farrell, Bookstream, NY

"Sacred Games far surpassed my expectations. The mafia angle always sells well, but Chandra's prose elevates it to a literary masterpiece. Chandra has captured that gritty, sickeningly sweet, perspiration soaked, electrifying addictive quality of India. Chandra has managed to weave the best and worst parts of Mumbai into an utterly spellbinding novel. It will appeal to those who have been and loved it, those that hate it will question their motives for doing so, and those that have never been will buy it for the opportunity to do so without the expense and lengthy flight. If this book doesn't skyrocket to the top of every bestseller list I need to find a new line of work, because that will prove I know nothing about books."
-- Julie Welter, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Chartlotte

"A marvelous book. Vikram Chandra is a weaver. He has created an intricately layered tapestry of post-colonial life in India. Inside of a skillfully wrought plot and thoroughly genuine characters, he has managed a masterful examination of India's culture, society and the injustice the vast majority of the people there suffer. For anyone who needs a crash course in the partition of India and Pakistan, the first of Chandra's "insets" is a brilliant account of this tragic event, seen through the eyes of a ten year old girl; it was at this point in the book that I truly became riveted. I had entertained the notion that Chandra had been holding back somewhat until he reached this point, and then just unleashed his considerable skill on the reader. This is a suspense and intrigue-filled cops and gangster story of great substance."
-- Patrick Gaffey, Maria's Bookshop

The Characters

Sartaj Singh: a Sikh police inspector in Mumbai

Katekar: a police constable who works with Sartaj Singh

Shalini: Katekar’s wife

Mohit and Rohit: their sons

Mrs. Kamala Pandey: a married woman and airline hostess with a lover, an airline pilot named Umesh

Kamble: an ambitious police sub-inspector who works with Sartaj Singh

Parulkar: a deputy commissioner of police in Mumbai

Ganesh Gaitonde: a notorious Hindu gangster and don, leader of the G-Company in Mumbai

Suleiman Isa: a much-feared Muslim gangster and don, leader of a rival gang in Mumbai

Katekar: a police constable who works with Sartaj Singh

Shalini, Katekar's wife

Mohit and Rohit, their sons

Paritosh Shah: a supremely gifted money handler for gangsters, including Ganesh Gaitonde

Kanta Bai: a businesswoman who deals with Paritosh Shah and Ganesh Gaitonde

Badriya: Paritosh Shah's bodyguard

Anjali Mathur: a government intelligence agent investigating Ganesh Gaitonde's death

Chotta Badriya: Ganesh Gaitonde's bodyguard, and the younger brother of Badriya

Juliet (Jojo) Mascarenas: a television producer/agent for aspiring actors and models ...and a high class Madam

Mary Mascarenas: Jojo's sister who works as a hairdresser

Wasim Zafar Ali Ahmad, a social worker in a poor neighborhood in Mumbai who has political aspirations

Prabhjot Kaur, "Nikki": Sartaj Singh's mother, originally from the Punjab Navneet, her beloved oldest sister

Ram Pari: the Hindu maidservant of Nikki's mother in the Punjab

Bunty: Ganesh Gaitonde's right hand man and organizer

Bipin Bhonsle: a Hindu fundamentalist politician whom Ganesh Gaitonde helps get elected to public office

Sharma (aka Trivedi): Bipin Ghonsle's ally who also works, through intermediaries, for Swami Shridhar Shukla

Swami Shridhar Shukla, "Guru-ji": a Hindu guru and nationalist, a spiritual adviser of international renown, who becomes Ganesh Gaitonde's spiritual mentor

Subhadra Devalakar: Ganesh Gaitonde's wife and mother of his young son

K.D. Yadav (aka Mr. Kumar): a pioneering Indian intelligence officer who "ran" Ganesh Gaitonde and became a mentor to Anjali Mathur

Mr. Kulkarni: the intelligence agent who runs Ganesh Gaitonde after K.D. Yadav

Major Shahid Khan: a Pakistani intelligence agent who masterminds a counterfeit money operation against India

Shambhu Shetty: proprietor of the Delite Dance Bar

Iffat-bibi: Suleiman Isa's maternal aunt who is one of his main controlers in Mumbai

Majid Khan: a police inspector in Mumbai, a colleague of Sartaj Singh

Zoya Mirza: a Muslim film actress and a rising star in Bollywood

Aadil Ansari: an educated but poor young man from a small rural village who flees to Mumbai where he invents a new life for himself

Sharmeen Khan: the high school age daughter of Major Shahid Khan, who moves to the USA to work in Washington, D.C. and brings his family -- wife, daughter, and mother -- with him.

Daddi: Shahid Khan's mother, originally from the Punjab; to her family, she is a Muslim, but she hides a secret.

The Story Behind The Book

It took me seven years to write this book.

After I had finished the stories in Love and Longing in Bombay, I still had the sense that I had unfinished business with the character Sartaj Singh. I had met several police officers in Bombay while I was writing the short story "Kama," and had become friendly with some of them. I found myself still asking them questions and listening to their stories, especially the ones about the city's burgeoning underworld. I added these stories to the tales I had heard as a child about legendary gangsters like Haji Mastaan and Yusuf Patel. And late one afternoon, my father and I were driving back to the suburb we lived in at the time. The car stopped in the middle of an enormous traffic jam, and then we heard the unmistakable booming of automatic weapons echoing back and forth between the buildings. The word spread from car to car: the police had cornered some bhais -- gangsters -- in an apartment building around the corner. We listened to the firing, and read about it in the paper the next morning. A few months later, an acquaintance of mine was fired at and wounded by extortionists. He survived, but just barely. Then someone else I knew was shot at as he was getting into his car. He escaped because of his cool-headed driver, who sped off with the doors open and my friend hanging on to the rear seat. And then, one day, I went to my sister's house, and found armed guards at the gates. Her husband, a filmmaker, had also received the dreaded phone call from Dubai, asking for money and promising retribution.

By now, I had met some of the bhais. Through journalists and policemen, I had made contact with them and met them in cafes and hotel rooms and their homes. The bosses of the "companies" (the gangs) were concerned about PR and therefore easier to meet than their soldiers, who were always frightened of being ambushed by rival companies or the police. I listened to them all, and by now I knew that I would write something about their world, which was not really an "underworld" but the world that all of us shared. Our lives intersected, and not merely through violence. I followed the connections, from the bhais to the policemen and back again, and then followed the gangland links to filmi parties awash with starlets and producers, and then north to Punjab and Kashmir and Jammu and points on the border and then east, to the other side of the country. From the bhais and Sartaj Singh, I was led into show business, politics, international espionage, and the unnoticed bravery of common people attempting to live with dignity. I was prompted more by curiosity than a considered plan: an intelligence officer in Amritsar gave me a lead I followed to Delhi, and that led back to Bombay. The novel that grew out of these many meetings moves through all these landscapes: a police officer falls in love; a young woman comes to the big city to become a film star; a young girl tries to understand what has become of her family in the midst of political chaos and mass murder; a widow battles poverty and the urban pressures that distort the lives of her young sons; a freshly-trained, inexperienced intelligence officer leads an army patrol into the bleak iciness of Himalayan peaks; a canny, intelligent woman takes some very shady money to produce television shows about the sufferings of women; an idealistic graduate student, hounded by the police and local politicians, seeks refuge in the ranks of Maoist guerillas; a right-wing religious leader conducts an enormous yagna or sacrifice for the citizens of Bombay; a famous, ferocious bhai leads his company to victory after victory, and discovers the strange emptiness of getting what he wants.

All these lives, simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, flow around and into each other to make the shape of the novel, which I hope holds what the last words of Love and Longing in Bombay reach for -- "only life itself."

-- Vikram Chandra

International Acclaim

"One of the great novels of our time. Epic in its scope and ambition, it has everything one could wish for in a novel."
--David Davidar, Penguin India

"A mesmerizing literary thriller about our world today…Reading this masterwork has been an unprecedented pleasure."
--Edoardo Brugnatelli, Mondadori (Italy)

"Enormously satisfying and exciting…crammed with mesmerizing characters and a gorgeous sense of place."
--Julian Loose, Faber (UK)

"Ambitious as well as hugely entertaining, a novel that reads like a thriller."
--Martijn David, Mouria (The Netherlands)

Praise for Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Published Book

 

Winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction

 

“[An] ambitious and extraordinary first novel... A magnificent tour de force, one of the finest Indian novels of the decade... All of his readers have cause to be profoundly grateful.”

 

—Shashi Tharoor, Los Angeles Times

 

“One of the most accomplished and rewarding novels of recent memory.”

 

—Houston Chronicle

 

“The novel becomes the history of India converted into the brilliant disorder of a kaleidoscope. It is adroitly written, constantly interesting, lyrical, fantastic, brutal, and, at bottom, serious. Mr. Chandra can make a lightning bolt look like a Roman candle--but that bolt strikes.”

 

—The Atlantic Monthly.

 

“It’s hard to believe that Red Earth and Pouring Rain is Vikram Chandra’s first novel. Its scope is so vast, its themes so large, one wonders not only that this is the work of a young man, but also where his next novel could possibly go . . . Time spent here will be all pleasure.”

 

—Seattle Times

 

“Chandra has built a powerful, moving saga that explores colonialism, death and suffering, ephemeral pleasure and the search for the meaning of life . . . This is an astonishing and brilliant debut.”

 

—Publishers Weekly

 

“Jauntily fresh fiction . . . This debut novel is a marvel.”

 

—Newsday

 

“Wonderfully told, with vividly atmospheric descriptions, appealing minor characters, and interesting insights into the history and culture of colonial

India

. Vikram Chandra’s considerable gifts as a stylist shine here.”

 

— Philadelphia Inquirer

 

 

“This debut novel is a daring feat of imagination, technique, and wordplay . . . Ambitious . . . And impressive, too.”

 

—Entertainment Weekly

 

“Red Earth and Pouring Rain is one of the most exciting adventure stories you will ever read. It captivates you, spanning centuries and continents, The characters are well‑drawn and believable . . . Chandra’s descriptions are imaginative and vivid . . . The action is rivetting, weaving the mystique of the gods with the frailties of humans . . .  Pure enjoyment.”

 

—Virginian Pilot

 

 

“A premier teller of tales. The language used by the young author is mesmerizing.”

 

—Denver Post

Praise for Love and Longing in Bombay

Winner of the Eurasia Region Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book

 

A New York Times Notable Book

 

 

“[Chandra] conjures up an India of glittering Bombay sophisticates, gritty policemen, high finance and low crime . . . A sureness of touch and mastery of structure that are deeply satisfying . . . A considerable achievement, one in which the author marries his storytelling prowess to a profound understanding of India’s ageless and ever-changing society.”

 

—Shashi Tharoor, New York Times Book Review.

 

“Richly inventive and confident ... Love and Longing in Bombay is an intricately built

book, but it never feels murky or obtuse. Once the reader is enticed onto Chandra’s carpet, the ride is smooth and sweeping, and the vistas that open up are filled with passages of surprising magic.”

 

—Los Angeles Times

 

“Love and Longing in Bombay is an ambitious, superbly controlled, gracefully written, humane book.”

 

—Houston Chronicle

 

“Immensely absorbing ... Impeccably controlled, intelligent, sensuous and sometimes grim, Chandra’s timeless and timely book is remarkably life‑affirming, considering the dark areas of the heart he explores.”

 

—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

 

“Chandra’s mastery lies in illuminating, through small and seemingly negligible detail, the consciousness of his characters ... We experience modes of thinking and behaving that include love and longing but go beyond them, that have endured through the centuries.”

 

—San Francisco Chronicle

 

“[Love and Longing in Bombay] will no doubt receive critical accolades in days to come . . . [Chandra] is almost a conjurer in manipulating situation and plot while capturing in incandescent prose the ongoing life of a vibrant but ugly modern megalopolis.”

 

—Washington Post

 

“A brilliant work, equally effective in its radiant separate parts and as a pleasingly complex and highly original construction.”

 

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

 

“Taut and dramatically paced, evocative and lushly written.... Compelling... Finely crafted.”

 

—Chicago Tribune

 

“Wonderfully complex and entertaining... Mr. Chandra’s touch is light, and his nuanced prose style is a delight to read. This collection reminds one of the fundamental pleasures of fiction: the enjoyment of surrendering to the engaging imagination of a superior writer.”

 

—Washington Times

 

“Chandra displays as light a satirical touch as if he were Edith Wharton set loose in Malabar Hill, the Great Neck of Bombay... Chandra knows how to catch a whole era of expectation and loss in a single phrase.”

 

—Newsday

Full story article at the-week.com

A sweeping article and interview at the-week.com, an India based newspaper.  This article covers quite a bit about the actual story.

Feature from UC Berkley's newspaper

A Hungry Mind feature at UC Berkley's online newspaper.  He is a lecturer at Berkley.

Short article at dnaindia.com

An article at dnaindia.com about Sacred Games, some comments from Vikram about his wedding, and a bit from Salman Rushidie.

Interview with Vikram by The Hindu

A short interview with Vikram at hindu.com, the online edition of India's national newspaper.