Between the Assassinations

On India's south-western coast, between Goa and Calicut, lies Kittur - a small, nondescript everytown. Ranging through the city's streets and schoolyards, bedrooms and businesses, its inner workings and its outer limits, Aravind Adiga acts as our guide to the town. Mapping the overlapping lives of Kittur's residents, an entire world is vividly and unforgettably brought to life. Here, an illiterate Muslim boy working at the train station finds himself tempted by an Islamic terrorist; a bookseller is arrested for selling a copy of The Satanic Verses; a rich, spoiled, half-caste student decides to explode a bomb in school; a sexologist has to find a cure for a young boy who may have AIDS. What emerges is the moral biography of an Indian town and a group portrait of ordinary Indians in a time of extraordinary transformation, over the seven-year period between the assassinations of Prime Minister Gandhi and her son Ranjiv. Keenly observed and finely detailed, Between the Assassinations is a triumph of voice and imagination.