Book Description

  • SACRED GAMES a literary novel that is also a crime novel, a detective story, and a thriller. Sartaj Singh, a seasoned and cynical Bombay police officer, is summoned by an anonymous tip one morning, by a voice which promises him an opportunity to capture the famed and very powerful Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde is the boss of the G-company, a large and powerful criminal organization. Sartaj Singh finds Gaitonde, but by the time he breaks into Gaitonde’s safe house, the mafia don is dead by his own hand. As Singh investigates Gaitonde’s death and life, he becomes aware of an immense danger that threatens him and the city he lives in, and the book turns into a slow-burning thriller. Simultaneously, an alternative narrative flashes back and depicts Ganesh Gaitonde’s rise in the underworld, his ruthlessness and his sentimentality, his cunning and his grandiose sense of self. The intertwining narratives of the book trace the journeys of these two men, the policeman and the gangster, as they move toward the secrets that threaten and haunt them, and toward self-knowledge.

The Author

  • Born in New Delhi, Vikram Chandra currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, California, where he teaches at the University of California. His first novel, RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN (1995), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. His next book, a collection of short stories entitled LOVE AND LONGING IN BOMBAY (1997), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and was a New York Times Notable Book.

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Harmandir Sahib

The Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of holies for the Sikh people. Guru Arjan installed the first copy of the Guru Granth Sahib here in 1604. Sikh pilgrims from all over the world travel to the Golden Temple to bathe in the lake that surrounds the temple and to listen to readings from the scriptures. The dip in the waters is known as “dukh bhanjan,” and is believed to banish illness and sorrow.

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About The Glossary

  • Welcome to the Sacred Games glossary. Click on the letters in the "Categories" column below to see the definitions of selected terms used in the book.

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