Product Description
Vikram Chandra's powerful epic draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singhand into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. ... Read more

Product Description
Vikram Chandra's powerful epic draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singhand into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. ... Read more

Product Description
Vikram Chandra's powerful epic draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singhand into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.Amazon.com Review
Sacred Games is a novel as big, ambitious, multi-layered, contradictory, funny, sad, scary, violent, tender, complex, and irresistible as India itself. Steep yourself in this story, enjoy the delicious masala Chandra has created, and you will have an idea of how the country manages to hang together despite age-old hatreds, hundreds of dialects, different religious practices, the caste system, and corruption everywhere. The Game keeps it afloat.

There are more than a half-dozen subplots to be enjoyed, but the main events take place between Inspector Sartaj Singh, a Sikh member of the Mumbai police force, and Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. It is no accident that Ganesh is named for the Hindu god of success, the elephant god much revered by Hindus everywhere. By the world's standards he has made a huge success of his life: he has everything he wants. But soon after the novel begins he is holed up in a bomb shelter from which there is no escape, and Sartaj is right outside the door. Ganesh and Sartaj trade barbs, discuss the meaning of good and evil, hold desultory conversations alternating with heated exchanges, and, finally, Singh bulldozes the building to the ground. He finds Ganesh dead of a gunshot wound, and an unknown woman dead in the bunker along with him.

How did it come to this? Of course, Singh has wanted to capture this prize for years, but why now and why in this way? The chapters that follow tell both their stories, but especially chronicle Gaitonde's rise to power. He is a clever devil, to be sure, and his tales are as captivating as those of Scheherezade. Like her he spins them out one by one and often saves part of the story for the reader--or Sartaj--to figure out. He is involved in every racket in India, corrupt to the core, but even he is afraid of Swami Shridlar Shukla, his Hindu guru and adviser. In the story Gaitonde shares with Singh and countless other characters, Vikram Chandra has written a fabulous tale of treachery, a thriller, and a tour of the mean streets of India, complete with street slang. --Valerie Ryan

Questions for Vikram Chandra

After writing his first two, critically acclaimed books, Red Earth and Pouring Rain and Love and Longing in Bombay, Vikram Chandra set off on what became, seven years later, an epic story of crime and punishment in modern Mumbai, Sacred Games. Chandra splits his time between Berkeley, where he teaches at the University of California, and Mumbai, the vast city that becomes a character in its own right in Sacred Games. We asked him a few questions about his new book.

Amazon.com: Did you imagine your book would become such an epic when you began it?

Vikram Chandra: No, not at all. When I began, I imagined a conventional crime story which began with a dead body or two, proceeded along a linear path, and ended 300 pages later with a neatly-wrapped solution. But when I began to actually investigate the particular kind of crime that I was interested in, a series of connections revealed themselves. Organized crime is of course connected to politics, both local and national, but if you're interested in political activity in India today--and elsewhere in the world--you are of course going to have to address the role of religion. These realms, in turn, intersect with the workings of the film and television industries. And all of this exists within the context of the "Great Game," the struggle between nation-states for power and dominance; some of the criminal organizations have mutually-beneficial relationships with intelligence agencies. So, I became really interested in this mesh of interlocking lives and organizations and historical forces. I began to trace how ordinary people were thrown about and forced to make choices by events and actors very far away; how disparate lives can cross each other--sometimes unknowingly--and change profoundly as a result. The form of the novel grew from this thematic interest, in an attempt to form a representation of this intricate web. The reader will, I hope, by the end of the novel see how the connections fall together and weave through each other. The individual characters, of course, see only a fragmented, partial version of this whole.

Amazon.com: You interviewed many gangsters, high and low, to research your story. How did you get introductions to them? What did they think of someone writing their life?

Chandra: When I was writing my last book, Love and Longing in Bombay (in which Sartaj Singh first appears), I had contacted some police officers and crime journalists. I stayed in touch with a few of them, and when I began to think seriously about this project I asked them to introduce me to anyone who could tell me something about organized crime. Amongst the people I met in this way were some people from the "underworld," which turns out not to be an underworld at all. It's the same world we live in, inhabited by human beings who are very much like the rest of us, even in their distinctiveness. For the most part, they were as curious about me and what I was doing as I was about them. They're not big novel readers, but they had very certain opinions about representations of their lives they had seen on the big screen: "Such-and-such film got it all wrong"--they would tell me--"don't do that." And, "This was correct, that was not." So I listened, and I hope I got it mostly right.

Amazon.com: For most American readers--like me--your story is full of slang and cultural references that we can't hope to follow. For me that's part of the charm--I feel like I'm immersed in a world I don't fully understand. Were you thinking of a particular audience as you wrote?

Chandra: I wanted to use the English that we actually speak in India, the language that I would use to tell this story if I were sitting in a bar in Mumbai talking to a friend. This English would be sprinkled with words from many Indian languages, and we would share a universe of cultural referents and facts that a reader from another country wouldn't recognize instantly. This, of course, is an experience that all of us have in a very various world. I remember reading British children's stories as a kid, and having long discussions with friends about what "crumpets" and "clotted cream" could possibly be. An Indian reader reading a novel about Arizona by an American writer might have no idea what a "pueblo" was, or why you went to a "Circle-K" to get a bottle of milk. But the context tells you something about what is being referred to, and there is a distinct delight in discovering a new world and figuring out its nuances. This is one of the great gifts of reading, that it can transport you into foreign landscapes. It's one of the reasons I read books from other cultures and places, and I hope American readers will share in this pleasure.

Amazon.com: Your book has dozens of characters who could live in books of their own. Aside from your two main figures, the policeman Sartaj Singh and the criminal Ganesh Gaitone, which was your favorite character to write?

Chandra: That would have to be Sartaj's mother, Prabhjot Kaur, as a young girl in pre-Partition India, I think. She's curious, innocent, and passionate; writing that chapter was hard and exhilarating.

Amazon.com: The movies of Bollywood (and Hollywood) are everywhere in your story, and many in your family (and you yourself) have been screenwriters and directors. For someone new to Indian film, what are some of your favorites you'd recommend?

Chandra: A very small sampling from the '50s onwards might be: Pyaasa (Thirst, 1957); Kaagaz ke Phool ("Paper Flowers," 1959); Mughal-e-Azam ("The Great Mughal," 1960); Sholay ("Embers," 1975); Parinda ("Bird," 1989); Satya (1998); Lagaan ("Land Tax," 2001); Lage Raho Munnabha ("Keep at it, Munnabhai," 2006).

Customer Reviews (80)

A Beautiful Book
I just finished Sacred Games on my Kindle.At first I thought it slow, but it then started coming together. As each character was introduced and unvailed I marveled at how the author had presented such a clear, moving and in-depth view of the person. I was moved by different scenes from tears to laughter. I could relate to the madness presented in Gaitonde. I began to understand better the economic system of bribes and payoffs and how integral it is to that society. I can relate to the strength it takes to overcome the many economic and cultural disadvantages people face in that part of the world. I was sorry that during my career, when I traveled to India and Pakistan that I had not taken time to probe and learn more about each person I worked with -- a missed opportunity. I appreciated the author wrapping up each character and event at the close of the book. I wish I had known that the Indian terms were explained in the back of the book, however as I read on I felt that I understood some of the meanings. Well worth reading.Oliver

Fun read
I can never get enough of Mumbai and the underworld. This satiates on both fronts.

A classic
Those of us who have never been to India usually get a rather fragmented view of it as we peruse the daily paper: a story about border problems, another about the latest terrorist attack, or yet another about food inflation. A good novel often attempts to put all the elements of a society together and thus give us a feel for a time and place; Sacred Games is a very appealing effort to give us a comprehensive view of a complex country as seen from Mumbai. One has to admire the audacity of publishing a nearly 1,000-page book in an era of soundbites and Twitter, but its length is an essential part of the portrait of this multi-faceted, dense, and enormous society. You can find just about everything in it: the India-Pakistan conflict, the 1947 Partition, gurus, Sikhs, Bollywood, the criminal underclass, street urchins, prostitutes, Indian food, the war with China, Nehru, elections, the caste system, and so much more. We almost expect a chapter on the Taj Mahal Hotel attack except that it happened after the book was published. It even touches on nuclear terrorism, the topic that President Obama considers of paramount importance these days.
The main characters stand out: the chapters involving Ganesh Gaitonde, the mafia don or bhai, have him telling his story in the first person; although powerful enough to be able to rig elections, he is unable, for instance, to have a protegée marry beneath her caste since it would make it impossible for her sisters to ever find a husband. Interspersed throughout the novel are the chapters about the hero, Sartaj Singh, a moderatly corrupt policeman; his story, told in the third person, begins at the time Gaitonde dies. Although this is a gripping detective novel, it's not as much a whodunit as a why-did-he-do-it.Three chapters at the end tie up some loose ends quite succesfully.

On my elite list
Perhaps I will lose my enthusiasm at some point, but in the flush of finishing, this amazing novel pushes its way onto my personal list of favorite contemporary writers, along with Murakami and Ishiguro. Beyond that, no comment at this time. I actually bought two compies of this book, one for my Kindle and one for my friend.

Visiting India
I absolutely loved every moment of this book.Its complicated and messy at times, but I think that's why I felt like I was experiencing the real India.The writing is extremely evocative and I often thought that I could smell the place. There were times when just the smallest turn of a phrase made me stop so that I could just be with the words.I thought the characterizations were amazing and I love that even the smallest characters are fully created.Knowing each one's history so well really gave the reader insight into their behavior and motivation.Collectively, this gave me a great sense of the culture.I also thought that the novel had an interesting spiritual element about it and gave me insight into the different religions that have shaped the culture over time.I found it fascinating from the very first page and thought it was well worth the investment of time and energy. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Bioinformation, published by Biomedical Informatics Publishing Group on January 1, 2008. The length of the article is 2039 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: Keywords: RNA polymerase binding site; 16S ribosomal RNA gene; transcription factor; promoter region; Acinetobacter; PCR

Citation Details
Title: Identification of regulatory elements in 16S rRNA gene of Acinetobacter species isolated from water sample.(Hypothesis)
Author: Shipra Srivastava
Publication: Bioinformation (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2008
Publisher: Biomedical Informatics Publishing Group
Page: 173(4)

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This digital document is an article from Rubber World, published by Lippincott & Peto, Inc. on October 1, 1992. The length of the article is 1857 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Modern radial tires rely on the adhesion of steel cord to rubber. This adhesion is primarily achieved through a cobalt adhesion promoter. Under extreme conditions, such as high temperatures or humidity levels, tires' steel-to-rubber bonds can fail. In laboratory tests, various post-vulcanization stabilizers were substituted for cobalt adhesion promoter, to determine if steel-to-rubber adhesion could be improved.

Citation Details
Title: The effect of partial substitution of cobalt adhesion promoter by post vulcanization stabilizers on steel cord to rubber adhesion.
Author: Murshid Hasan
Publication: Rubber World (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 1992
Publisher: Lippincott & Peto, Inc.
Volume: v207Issue: n1Page: p25(4)

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