false 4 0 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 08 14:28:42 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 08 14:42:36 -0700 2008 When i first picked up the book i was disappointed because i didn't feel as if i was in the mood for a long read (at this point in my summer).
However, once i began reading Chandra's work i became enthralled.
The first thing that is unusual is the inter-weaving of so many plot lines. The main story plot begins in the present day and revolves around an Indian boy and his adventures during his senior year in U of C Pomona.
However, it quickly unravels into multiple story lines which mostly take place within Colonial India.
The 'Indian' influences found in the culture and myths which are the authors (both Chandra's and the multiple narrators within the book) are wonderful and especially familiar to me.
Gods such as Yama, Hanuman and Ganesha all make appearances.
Within the book one of the English colonists provides his opinion of India literature. A truer description of Chandra's own book could not be written.
"I've read your great books, all the great wisdom of the East. And such a mass and morass of darkness, confusion, necromancy, stupidity, avarice, I've never seen. Plots meander, veering from grief t6o burlesque in a minuet. Unrelated narratives entwine and break into each other. Whole huge battles, millions of men a side, stop short so some dying patriarch can give a speech about duty, a speech that goes on for fifties of pages. Metaphors that call attention to themselves, strings of similes that go from line to line. Characters fall in love or murder, only to have their actions explained away as results of past births. Characters dies, only to be reborn again. Beginnings are not really beginning, middles are unendurably long and convoluted, nothing ever ends. Tragedy is impossible here!"]]>