Shining Hero [Hardcover]

Sara Banerji (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2002

A rich and dramatic story of a poor young Indian boy who fights like a tiger to achieve fame and fortune In a village just outside present-day Calcutta, Koonty, a young girl is squatting in pain beside the river, convinced that her agony is the result of a fish allergy. It's not -- she's giving birth and as the realisation dawns on her, she makes the connection with the encounter she had all those months ago with the swimming stranger with the golden bathing shorts...Horrified, she places the baby onto a piece of floating debris, fixes her own necklace around his neck and pushes him downriver. Several miles downstream in Calcutta, the baby is discovered by Dolly, a young married woman desperate for a child. She takes him home and brings him up as her own son, calling him Karna. And so begins a chain of events which sees Karna's initial good fortune turn to tragedy so that, years later, he's forced to seek out Koonty, now married and with a son of her own...* Great commercial literary fiction. An enriching, emotionally charged epic story, engrossing and entrancing. A dash of Homestead, a dash of Angela's Ashes. * For fans of Amitav Ghosh, Sharon Maas, Rohinton Mistry

Editorial Reviews

Review

'It's not like any other book set in India I've ever read - there's no striving to be exotic - it's rich, exciting and moving, at ease depicting the workings of a big, affluent landed household, yet equally confident in its dealing with urban street life. This is a lovely, big book.' Barbara Trapido

In this lively and absorbing novel Sara Banerji uses the elements of the epic poem The Mahabharata to create a modern life parable prefacing each chapter with an appropriate excerpt and constantly drawing the reader's attention to the features of the story. Beginning with a baby found floating in a sacred river and a poor but honest woman who adopts him, she re-interprets every precious myth and legend. Her picaresque tale involves crowd scenes of thousands, multitudes of extras, elephants, tinsel, gods and goddesses. She laughs at her characters' misfortunes and with a scarcely disguised irony portrays Indian society with all of its chronic problems. Arjuna, the heroic warrior of the Mahabharata, is taught that he has a duty to fight; Banerji's Arjuna is full of hatred for his half-brother Karna and the story traces the rivalry and bitterness between these siblings from early childhood until they are separated by death. One of them represents an India where luxury is taken for granted, the other has learnt to survive in the dirt and poverty of Calcutta. But the humour is too sly and the protagonists too fallible for this to be a tragedy. Both boys yearn to become film stars dripping with gold and wearing mock armour, one absurd adventure followed quickly by another. Only their aunt, Shivarini, recognizes the falseness of this illusionary, Bollywood happiness and uses her education and wealth to tackle injustice: the plight of India's downtrodden women, the abandoned street children and the exploitation of the poor villagers. The reader is invited to be a wry spectator of this galloping and vivid narrative, only occasionally allowed to pause for breath in order to share the characters' inner thoughts. Banerji trusts us to draw the right conclusions about morality and make our own value judgements. An imaginative tour-de-force. (Kirkus UK)

From the Publisher

In a village outside modern–day Calcutta, a young girl sends a baby floating down a sacred river towards an unknown destiny. The river will ultimately link the fate of young Karna to that of a host of other characters: his teenage mother, Koonty; his half–brother and rival, Arjuna; his destitute foster mother, Dolly; as well as ruthless street thugs, pariahs, and film stars. In this enchanting novel, which dips luxuriously into the richness of Indian myth and Hindu legend, Sara Banerji takes us on an exhilarating ride from the underworld of Calcutta, to Bollywood, up into the Himalayas, culminating—as the brothers fight for fame and fortune— in a race to the death that only one can win. Debut novelist Sara Banerji teaches Creative Writing at Oxford University. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (July 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007137427
• ISBN-13: 978-0007137428
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,077,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sara Banerji is the daughter of Anita Mostyn, a novelist who wrote in the 1950's under the pen name Anne Mary Feilding and of Sir Basil Mostyn, Bart. She is descended from the family of Henry Fielding, the 18th century author.

Born in England and evacuated to various large and crumbling country mansions during the war, Sara spent the later part of her childhood in a mud rondavel in what was then Southern Rhodesia, where her father grew tobacco. She later hitchhiked round Europe, worked as an au pair and went to art school in Austria.

While working in a coffee bar in Oxford, Sara met her husband-to-be, a law undergraduate from India. She lived for seventeen years with her husband and three daughters on tea plantations in the hills of South India and in Assam in the North East. She and her husband also ran a dairy and poultry farm in her husband's ancestral village in West Bengal.

During these years she held exhibitions of her oil paintings, rode as a jockey, and started writing novels.

Returning to England, broke because of Indian currency restrictions, she bought ponies and gave riding lessons, cooked Indian feasts for people's dinner parties, and set up a gardening business. During this period she learnt Transcendental Meditation and yogic flying, which she has practiced ever since.

Her first novel, 'Cobwebwalking', was published in 1986. She now lives in Oxford where she continues to write, paint and make her unique sculptures, and cultivate her prolific allotment.

Up to July 2011 Sara has published twelve novels. Her publishers have included Victor Gollancz, Transworld and Harper Collins, and her books have appeared in hardback and paperback editions. Her most recent novels are published on Kindle.

She won the Arts Council of England award, The Author's Foundation award, the Write Out Loud award, was long-listed for the Booker prize and her last book was nominated for the IMPAC award.

She teaches creative writing at Oxford University's Department of Continuing Education and has also taught at many other venues including the Cheltenham Literature Festival and on a Greek island. Several of her students have had their novels published by mainstream publishers, their plays performed on the professional stage or have won literary prizes. She and her students put on several public literary events for Oxfringe each year and together have created several collections of stories, the most recent being two books of short stories set in and around Oxford. The third, 'Oxford Story Walks,' will be published this autumn.