Customer Reviews

Delhi Noir (Akashic Noir)

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The ancient Indian capital is the latest venue of the Noir Series and "India Uncut" is the most apt description that comes to mind. A talented line-up of writers, including both seasoned and new, tell tales of an urban existence unadulterated by political correctness, the agendas of governments and corporations, or the common perception of modern India as an emerging, secular superpower. Delhi Noir proves to be a thoroughly vivid, entertaining and insightful read. In editor Hirsh Sawhney's own words: "It's only natural that Delhi's book buying and publishing citizens would avoid such writing. Any insight into their hometown's ugly entrails would threaten their guilt-free gilded existence and the bubble of nationalistic euphoria in which their lives are contained."

Delhi Noir is an interesting collection of stories written by new and old writers! The organization by neighborhood was especially fun for those of us who are well familiar with Delhi and the stories do reflect something of the dark side of these places. It is a nice corrective to the easy glamour of much of India's popular culture's self-representation and also to the endless gloomy statistics of writers focused on the need for reform and such in India. Like all noir, it shows the good, the bad and the ugly but unlike Maximum City's voyeuristic representation of the underbelly of Bombay/Mumbai, Delhi Noir explores the experience of Delhi with a much broader set of lenses. Particularly nice is the story by Uday Prakash, which is beautifully translated by Jason Grunebaum. If you love Delhi or you love noir or, like me, you love both, get this book!

What I enjoyed most about the stories in this collection was the atmosphere and ambience of another culture. I could see and almost smell the setting, and I definitely wanted to eat Indian cuisine while reading this book. What I liked least was the "mystery" in each story. Hardly. To me, these read like stories by short-story writers who don't write or maybe even read mysteries, but who were asked to or volunteered to write a "mystery" story for this collection. There's one story in this collection that I read twice, trying to figure out what, exactly, the crime or mystery was: never did figure it out.

I had high expectations about this book when i picked it up, but it turned out to a bunch of boring stories written by amateurs. Most of the stories are high on sleaze and abuse rather than concentrating on the genre of the book which is supposed to be mystery. Being an Indian and having lived in Delhi for more than 4 years, I was very eager to read this book. It was a total let down. I would advise non Indians to not read this book as this can have a negative impact on your idea of India and Delhi in particular. There is too much sleaze in all the stories and I would not recommend it for readers who are not looking for it.

Final verdict : Disappointing