What do you think?
Rate this book
The Solitude of Emperors
Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents, Vijay is desperate to escape to the raw energy of Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance arrives unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju, is recruited by a right-wing organization. As a result of an article he writes about the increasing power of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist . There he meets Rustom Sorabjee — the inspirational founder of the magazine who opens Vijay’s eyes to the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of religion and politics.A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up in violent riots that rip though the city, a reflection of the upsurge of fundamentalism everywhere in the country. He is sent to a small tea town in the Nilgiri Mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well, specifically a spectacular shrine called The Tower of God, which is the object of political wrangling. He is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and colourful character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes Pessoa, Cavafy, and Rimbaud, but is ostracized by a local elite obsessed with little more than growing their prize fuchsias. As the discord surrounding the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert them to the dangers, but his intervention will have consequences he could never have foreseen.The Solitude of Emperors is a stunningly perceptive novel about modern India, about what drives fundamentalist beliefs, and what makes someone driven, bold, or mad enough to make a stand.I thought about the taxi driver who had been murdered. Deepak hadn’t said whether he was young or old, but I imagined him to be as young as I was, and there was a good chance that he, like me, was a recent immigrant to the city, perhaps from Hyderabad, or some smaller place that did not have enough work or resources to hold on to its young. He would have come here hoping to make his fortune, and maybe in time he would have.Why had he worn the badges of his faith to the very end, I wondered. Even when his life was at stake, why hadn’t he thought to take them off? Maybe they were so much a part of him, he hadn’t even seen them as symbols to be discarded. They would have helped him link himself to a community, of course, until he had saved enough to bring his family over from his home town because it was likely he had married young. Until this fateful day, his religion would have saved him from the loneliness of the room in the chawl or slum. He would go to the mosque, meet others as lonely as he was. They would do their namaz together, celebrate the great festivals of Id and Ramzan with feasts of biryani on Mohammed Ali Road. Yes, his religion had been good to him, until the day it had devoured him.— From The Solitude of Emperors
Hardcover
First published September 4, 2007
About the author
David Davidar
16 books200 followersDavid Davidar is an author and publisher. He was educated at Madras (now Chennai) and Harvard University (where he obtained a diploma in publishing). In 1985, while still in his mid-twenties, he became one of the founding members of Penguin in India, where he edited or published authors like Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Rohinton Mistry, and Salman Rushdie.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
Read
January 16, 2009Explanation of Rating: The reason of giving there stars is that the story of this book is about the history of India in the 1990s. It is interesting to lead about a Hindu fundamentalist cult and a Christian shrine, however, sometimes; it was hard to understand the details of Indian culture.
Recommendation: I think that people who are interested in learning history especially Indian history would like the novel, The Solitude of Emperors because it mainly tells about the story of India in the 1990s. Thus, they could know and experience indirectly what happened at that time.
Summary: Vijay, who is in a small-town in Southern India, 1990s is desperate to escape to the big city. He has a chance unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju runs away to join a Hindu fundamentalist cult. Thus, he writes an article about the increasing power of the fundamentalists, and he eventually gets a job in a small Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist. While being there, Vijay wants to get to the heart of the story about violent riots in which hordes of extremists search out and murder Muslims. To recuperate, he decides to go on a working holiday to a tea estate in the Nilgiri Mountains, near a Christian shrine, The Tower of God, that is the object of a religious wrangling. At that place, Vijay befriends Noah who is in the local ceremony. When Vijay knows that the discord is coming, so he tries to alert Noah and others to the dangers, but no one can’t believe that anything serious will happen.
August 6, 2008
Picked this up with rather high expectations as I really liked his previous effort, House of Blue Mangoes....unfortunately, the book is no where as good as the first one and the story line unexciting. Kept waiting for the climax which never came. While it was a pleasant read in terms of the narrative on the locations, thought that the characters were rather shallow.
August 1, 2017
An Indian novel that – for once – is not about family dramas, but nevertheless conveys India’s complex, colourful, spicy richness of its peoples and religions. Vijay flees his dull tiny town in Tamil Naidu and lands a job as apprentice journo on an obscure magazine in Bombay. The magazine promotes religious tolerance and communalism as opposed to religious fundamentalism and sectarianism.
We encounter the Hindu v.s. Muslim riots that took place in Bombay, which are echoed ,albeit on a smaller scale, in a small remote hillside town in the Nilgris, where Vijay’s crusading has fatal consequences.
There’s evocative descriptions of Bombay and the hills , plus a rich gallery of characters to keep us entertained. Davidar gives us an outline of the emperors’ historical achievements which underpin the theme of the novel.
An unusual novel. If you enjoy Indian novels – try this one.
We encounter the Hindu v.s. Muslim riots that took place in Bombay, which are echoed ,albeit on a smaller scale, in a small remote hillside town in the Nilgris, where Vijay’s crusading has fatal consequences.
There’s evocative descriptions of Bombay and the hills , plus a rich gallery of characters to keep us entertained. Davidar gives us an outline of the emperors’ historical achievements which underpin the theme of the novel.
An unusual novel. If you enjoy Indian novels – try this one.
November 27, 2015
Watching a person whom you have known for a long time turning into a monster is how a lot of survivors talk about riots. The neighbors you thought you know, the people who you see every day they may all turn out to be slobbering, drooling maniacs when the rage virus catches hold of them. Especially when the riot takes on the hues of religion, the carnage is unbelievable and India has been a witness to this right from the next day of its independence. Having read Khushwant Singh, Sasi Tharoor, Collins & LaPierre and O.V. Vijayan, I was keen on getting to this book which seemed to talk about riots and how it influences lives. The back jacket blurb talked about how the lives of Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhi influences one man who bore the scars of the Mumbai riots to change the future of a sleepy little town in south India. The overall idea of this book is brilliant but the execution is to lifeless that finishing this was a chore.
In the late 70’s and 80’s, a lot of Malayalam novels followed a certain set structure. From a small town somewhere in Kerala a young man escapes poverty and unemployment to join the teeming masses in Mumbai or Delhi and grows up into manhood there. He undergoes many a test of mettle there and discovers love, sex, politics, drugs and alcohol and depending on the authors ideas his future life is sketched out for us. Authors like M.T. Vasudevan Nair, M. Mukundan and O.V. Vijayan have explored this bildungsroman in their works which are landmarks for any reader of Malayalam literature. This book follows the same pattern but was a tasteless and bland rehash of the masters ! Its more than a day since I finished reading this book and I still have no idea what was the objective of this book. The characters, their motivations, their circumstances none of these makes any sense. It was just a book filled with a lot of words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters that aimlessly wandered over a lot of landscapes in north and south India.
Not recommended !
In the late 70’s and 80’s, a lot of Malayalam novels followed a certain set structure. From a small town somewhere in Kerala a young man escapes poverty and unemployment to join the teeming masses in Mumbai or Delhi and grows up into manhood there. He undergoes many a test of mettle there and discovers love, sex, politics, drugs and alcohol and depending on the authors ideas his future life is sketched out for us. Authors like M.T. Vasudevan Nair, M. Mukundan and O.V. Vijayan have explored this bildungsroman in their works which are landmarks for any reader of Malayalam literature. This book follows the same pattern but was a tasteless and bland rehash of the masters ! Its more than a day since I finished reading this book and I still have no idea what was the objective of this book. The characters, their motivations, their circumstances none of these makes any sense. It was just a book filled with a lot of words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters that aimlessly wandered over a lot of landscapes in north and south India.
Not recommended !
October 12, 2015
Disappointing after House of Blue Mangoes..
June 2, 2025
I picked up this book on a whim in a bookstore in India. It had a beautiful cover (not this one on Goodreads), and the title appealed to me.
The author appeals for a truly secular India, the one envisioned by Ashoka, Akbar, and Gandhi. In the form of a story, based in Bombay and the Nilgiris, containing many essays, he explains why it would benefit us all to embrace this idea.
He explains with great sympathy the view of those who may be opposed to secularism and why they may see it as such.
It's hard to have an objective view on a book like this. The only world I can imagine is one where people of all faiths and no faiths live together as one. I've seen the horror of when people divide over religious beliefs. Bloodshed, riots, and fear. And I've bonded over great food and shared values.
As the world becomes more and more polarised, I wish appeals such as these could penetrate the hearts of the frustrated, and we could look for other solutions to very real problems. But perhaps like this author, I'm a dreamer or an Emperor yet to emerge.
The author appeals for a truly secular India, the one envisioned by Ashoka, Akbar, and Gandhi. In the form of a story, based in Bombay and the Nilgiris, containing many essays, he explains why it would benefit us all to embrace this idea.
He explains with great sympathy the view of those who may be opposed to secularism and why they may see it as such.
It's hard to have an objective view on a book like this. The only world I can imagine is one where people of all faiths and no faiths live together as one. I've seen the horror of when people divide over religious beliefs. Bloodshed, riots, and fear. And I've bonded over great food and shared values.
As the world becomes more and more polarised, I wish appeals such as these could penetrate the hearts of the frustrated, and we could look for other solutions to very real problems. But perhaps like this author, I'm a dreamer or an Emperor yet to emerge.
February 18, 2021
Ahh, what a time to read a book like this! It's almost like a reality foretold. Even though the plot is not nail-bitting which was clearly anyway not the objective of this book, the characters are quite interesting and familiar, except for Noah of course. No wonder he is an emperor of the everyday and hence as rare as Ashoka or Akbar or Gandhi.
I loved how this book did exactly what it set about to do from the beginning, right from the title itself.
Bonus is that section of the book where we get a glimpse of the life of the Bombay poets - Moraes, Kolatkar and all. What a joy reading that part was!
Read it guys!
I loved how this book did exactly what it set about to do from the beginning, right from the title itself.
Bonus is that section of the book where we get a glimpse of the life of the Bombay poets - Moraes, Kolatkar and all. What a joy reading that part was!
Read it guys!
May 14, 2017
A small town boy moves to Bombay and becomes interested in the 1992 riots, he has been working for a publication giving air to the rise of fundamentalism and its inherent dangers for his country. After seeing first hand the aftermath of a riot in which a muslim is left dead, and he also receives serious injuries, he is sent to the hills to recover. Here he meets an unlikely hero living in a graveyard, but the ending is far from satisfying, and the book leaves you with a sense of the futility of fundamentalism.
June 9, 2019
This novel tells the story of a young Indian man who moves to Bombay from his small town to work as a journalist for a small journal called THE INDIAN SECULARIST. While there he experiences the riots against Muslims in 1993 and is traumatized. His editor sends him to the mountains of southern India to recover but even there he finds the threat of sectarian violence coming into this rural area. A strong book that brings out well the impact of India's sectarian struggles on the lives of Indians.
November 12, 2019
I adore the writing style of the author and this alone was enough to make me enjoy the book. However, the story was in my opinion mediocre - perhaps partly because I found it unrelatable. I do think some of the issues raised are interesting and worth thinking about. There were also some interesting characters in the book, but unfortunately the main character wasn't one of them - somehow I think he was very realistically written, but he just wasn't that much fun to read about sometimes.
November 24, 2018
Less engaging than expected. This belongs to the variety of too familiar, description of life as it happens. Almost like turning pages of some past issues of India today or some other regular magazine. A reportage, not a story. Might interest people who haven't lived these years in India.
February 25, 2018
Once again (after "House of Blue Mangoes") I am blown away. Lots that I can learn from (passages about Ashoka, Akbar), and also a wonderfully written story.
August 15, 2012
This is a beautiful book by yet another excellent Indo-Canadian author.
"Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents, Vijay is desperate to escape to the raw energy of Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance arrives unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju, is recruited by a right-wing organization. As a result of an article he writes about the increasing power of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist. There he meets Rustom Sorabjee — the inspirational founder of the magazine who opens Vijay’s eyes to the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of religion and politics.
A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up in violent riots that rip though the city, a reflection of the upsurge of fundamentalism everywhere in the country. He is sent to a small tea town in the Nilgiri Mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well, specifically a spectacular shrine called The Tower of God, which is the object of political wrangling. He is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and colourful character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes Pessoa, Cavafy, and Rimbaud, but is ostracized by a local elite obsessed with little more than growing their prize fuchsias. As the discord surrounding the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert them to the dangers, but his intervention will have consequences he could never have foreseen.
The Solitude of Emperors is a stunningly perceptive novel about modern India, about what drives fundamentalist beliefs, and what makes someone driven, bold, or mad enough to make a stand.
'I thought about the taxi driver who had been murdered. Deepak hadn’t said whether he was young or old, but I imagined him to be as young as I was, and there was a good chance that he, like me, was a recent immigrant to the city, perhaps from Hyderabad, or some smaller place that did not have enough work or resources to hold on to its young. He would have come here hoping to make his fortune, and maybe in time he would have.
Why had he worn the badges of his faith to the very end, I wondered. Even when his life was at stake, why hadn’t he thought to take them off? Maybe they were so much a part of him, he hadn’t even seen them as symbols to be discarded. They would have helped him link himself to a community, of course, until he had saved enough to bring his family over from his home town because it was likely he had married young. Until this fateful day, his religion would have saved him from the loneliness of the room in the chawl or slum. He would go to the mosque, meet others as lonely as he was. They would do their namaz together, celebrate the great festivals of Id and Ramzan with feasts of biryani on Mohammed Ali Road. Yes, his religion had been good to him, until the day it had devoured him.' " —From The Solitude of Emperors
"Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents, Vijay is desperate to escape to the raw energy of Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance arrives unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju, is recruited by a right-wing organization. As a result of an article he writes about the increasing power of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist. There he meets Rustom Sorabjee — the inspirational founder of the magazine who opens Vijay’s eyes to the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of religion and politics.
A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up in violent riots that rip though the city, a reflection of the upsurge of fundamentalism everywhere in the country. He is sent to a small tea town in the Nilgiri Mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well, specifically a spectacular shrine called The Tower of God, which is the object of political wrangling. He is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and colourful character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes Pessoa, Cavafy, and Rimbaud, but is ostracized by a local elite obsessed with little more than growing their prize fuchsias. As the discord surrounding the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert them to the dangers, but his intervention will have consequences he could never have foreseen.
The Solitude of Emperors is a stunningly perceptive novel about modern India, about what drives fundamentalist beliefs, and what makes someone driven, bold, or mad enough to make a stand.
'I thought about the taxi driver who had been murdered. Deepak hadn’t said whether he was young or old, but I imagined him to be as young as I was, and there was a good chance that he, like me, was a recent immigrant to the city, perhaps from Hyderabad, or some smaller place that did not have enough work or resources to hold on to its young. He would have come here hoping to make his fortune, and maybe in time he would have.
Why had he worn the badges of his faith to the very end, I wondered. Even when his life was at stake, why hadn’t he thought to take them off? Maybe they were so much a part of him, he hadn’t even seen them as symbols to be discarded. They would have helped him link himself to a community, of course, until he had saved enough to bring his family over from his home town because it was likely he had married young. Until this fateful day, his religion would have saved him from the loneliness of the room in the chawl or slum. He would go to the mosque, meet others as lonely as he was. They would do their namaz together, celebrate the great festivals of Id and Ramzan with feasts of biryani on Mohammed Ali Road. Yes, his religion had been good to him, until the day it had devoured him.' " —From The Solitude of Emperors
August 29, 2025
Like many others here, i picked up this book after I fell in love with the author's previous work. But i did not have high expectations from the book and i was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be an interesting read. But with one glaring problem i realized halfway through.
Here's everything good about this book.
The writing style is vividly descriptive and it has a poetic quality that i really enjoyed. His description of the quaint little village on the Nilgiris made me want to visit the place someday. Even the way he fondly reminisces about good times in Bombay in the 90's made me nostalgic for a time i never even experienced. The story starts with an enigmatic character and he stays an enigma until the very end, keeping us guessing what he's thinking. As a storyteller, the author does a fine job.
My only problem is that it's a man's story through and through, set in a society that very much includes women. Where are all the women?
There's not a single female character with more than two lines of dialogue. A couple of women appear solely as love interests and objects of pleasure, while enigmatic and conflicted men try to save the country. And the absence of women is so seamlessly believable that if i were a man , i would never have noticed. It is disturbing how easy it is to eliminate women from the main narrative.
The story scours through history to find ideals our country must emulate, and comes up with three men - all famous enough that their ideals are already taught to us young girls when we are told not to be like them, but to find someone like them to protect us. The entire story made me feel like i exist to be protected and not to fight. It reminded me how it's still a man's world out there.
But other than that, the ideologies about secularism are articulated well and easy to follow for anyone with basic GK and awareness about society.
Here's everything good about this book.
The writing style is vividly descriptive and it has a poetic quality that i really enjoyed. His description of the quaint little village on the Nilgiris made me want to visit the place someday. Even the way he fondly reminisces about good times in Bombay in the 90's made me nostalgic for a time i never even experienced. The story starts with an enigmatic character and he stays an enigma until the very end, keeping us guessing what he's thinking. As a storyteller, the author does a fine job.
My only problem is that it's a man's story through and through, set in a society that very much includes women. Where are all the women?
There's not a single female character with more than two lines of dialogue. A couple of women appear solely as love interests and objects of pleasure, while enigmatic and conflicted men try to save the country. And the absence of women is so seamlessly believable that if i were a man , i would never have noticed. It is disturbing how easy it is to eliminate women from the main narrative.
The story scours through history to find ideals our country must emulate, and comes up with three men - all famous enough that their ideals are already taught to us young girls when we are told not to be like them, but to find someone like them to protect us. The entire story made me feel like i exist to be protected and not to fight. It reminded me how it's still a man's world out there.
But other than that, the ideologies about secularism are articulated well and easy to follow for anyone with basic GK and awareness about society.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 19, 2014
Very rarely do you come across books in the literary fiction genre which also make for really interesting reading in terms of the character development, plot progress and also throw in a bit of suspense as well. The Solitude of Emperors does precisely that.
David Davidar, the author, is at his best when it comes to the language used, the pacing of the book, and the plot itself. How Vijay the protagonist who starts off as somebody who desperately harks for the big city life moves to Bombay, becomes a journalist, has a life changing experience in the post Babri Masjid riots, and his journey to hill station Mehan, makes up for the story of the book itself.
What remains with you for a long time after you have put the book down would be the character of Noah, the eclectic, wierd, pot smoking caretaker of the cemetery at Meham, his stories, his outlook to life, the impact he has on Vijay and the critical role he plays in the climax of the book.
A beautiful book which took a long time to find its way from my book shelf to my hands. But the wait was well and truly worth it, no two ways about it.
David Davidar, the author, is at his best when it comes to the language used, the pacing of the book, and the plot itself. How Vijay the protagonist who starts off as somebody who desperately harks for the big city life moves to Bombay, becomes a journalist, has a life changing experience in the post Babri Masjid riots, and his journey to hill station Mehan, makes up for the story of the book itself.
What remains with you for a long time after you have put the book down would be the character of Noah, the eclectic, wierd, pot smoking caretaker of the cemetery at Meham, his stories, his outlook to life, the impact he has on Vijay and the critical role he plays in the climax of the book.
A beautiful book which took a long time to find its way from my book shelf to my hands. But the wait was well and truly worth it, no two ways about it.
August 31, 2015
A strong narrative with an interesting protagonist, not the narrator Vijay but the mysterious Noah. The story is woven into the theme of contemporary Indian society's struggle with religion, with a small town acting as a microcosm. Vijay turns out to be a very weak character, and one doesn't know whether this was intentional. Also the author's strong dislike for a major Indian party comes through more forcefully than it should, in the process coloring every one in black and white, without shades of grey. The inclusion of passages on Akbar, Gandhi etc jars on the flow of narrative. Nevertheless the picturisation of landscapes and the description of life in rural India, which is central to the plot, is quite well done and gives strength to the narrative. With a little less pontification and stronger focus on the plot, it could have been a great novel.
January 10, 2012
Didn't really get caught up with the narrative, though the characters were interesting. Loved the way he captured the backdrop of the Bombay riots, and the mood of the city at the time. also really liked the Emperors -- got me started on reading about Din-e-Ilahi, which I'd truly forgotten all about. And refreshed my admiration and sense of wonder at Gandhi -- again, a sense I'd long relegated to the backburner. Not a book I'd recommend as a particularly great read, but I did enjoy it quite a lot.
September 4, 2012
The author too often leaves out critical bits of narrative/plot in the linear storytelling, only to then revert to these previously-unrevealed scenes in flashbacks - flashbacks which advance the story and which could've been rendered completely unnecessary by a tighter plotline. As in, he could've used events in linear sequence as allusions to future events but time and again avoided doing so. Frustrating.
July 12, 2015
I loved the history of this book and had just watched a show on the rising nationalist movement in India and the clashes there because of religion race and gender.Mr Davidar made some profound statements in this book. One quote i liked was ' It is only when people close to us die,that we begin to learn how to live as we should'
April 30, 2010
Seemed quite promising, I wanted it to go on. It's refreshing to see a Hindu fundamentalist (not a caricature, either). A fascinating setting, lots of great characters, too bad not more was made of them, too bad the narrator is not one of them.
January 29, 2012
I liked it a lot, but it does move slowly and deals with religion and philosophy, so won't necessarily interest a lot of people. It helped explain some of the riots going on with India working for "India for Indians."
June 19, 2013
His previous book, The house of Blue Mangoes, was one of those big fat Indian sagas that you just get lost in. This novel was more of an intellectual examination of racial prejudice between Hindus and Muslims. Interesting, but not riveting.
June 19, 2013
The book made me feel nostalgic, reading about Noah and his life. The character is a true son of the small town of Nagercoil where I am from. An inspiring character and an emperor. Noah would leave a lasting reminder on my mind like some of my friends and relatives do.
February 3, 2012
Till now, can't really sense enough conviction in his narration of the Bombay riots and bomb blasts. May be I'll get there soon. Still reading.
Read
April 7, 2009Have just started reading this book and am already thinking about it even at work.
June 17, 2010
Though the novel starts off brilliantly it drags towards the end and ends with the bleakness that makes to rethink about the time you have spent on reading it..
May 6, 2011
I really enjoyed this book, the idea, descriptions and everything. However, 1 star taken off because Ithought it was a bit dry.
March 5, 2012
I think it's hard reading novels about people killing people in the name of faith. It's like if I tried to read a physics textbook- I can't understand the concept.
May 2, 2013
A scary tale of South Asian religious fanaticism.
February 14, 2014
slow ..but interesting ....
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews