Snake Charmer [Paperback]

Sanjay Nigam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

Hailed as an important new voice in fiction, Sanjay Nigam's debut is the story of a luckless snake charmer in an India both real and utterly magical

Named "The Year's Best Fiction" by A. Magazine, The Snake Charmer tells the story of Sonalal, a middle-age snake charmer making a living with his been pipe and his beloved cobra, Raju. Despite his great skills, Sonalal's drinking and womanizing seem to have marked him for a life of insignificance. But that all changes one remarkable afternoon when he produces music so beautiful he is certain the gods must be listening. In a moment that will change his life forever, Raju bites Sonalal, and Sonalal bites back, destroying the one creature who loves him. The Snake Charmer traces Sonalal's bumpy journey through brief celebrity, profound remorse, and a quest for answers to unanswerable questions of love, life, and art. Sparely and beautifully written, this "novel of enchantments" (Oscar Hijuelos) is an unforgettable debut, confirming the Washington Post's comparison of Nigam to Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra.

* Penguin Readers Guide Bound into Every Book

"An engaging, light as a feather tale . . . Sonalal is, in short, a marvelous creation." --Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

"The opening qualifies as the season's best." --USA Today

"An exceptional novel."--The Washington Post

* A selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club

* A Quality Paperback New Voices Fiction Award nominee

* The Utne Reader recently honored Nigam as one of the ten important writers who comprise "The New Face of Fiction"

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Some lifetimes seem to hinge on a single day, and for Sonalal today was that day."

A middle-aged snake charmer wakes up one morning in Delhi, little knowing that by evening his whole world will have been turned upside down, his life irrevocably changed. Married to an embittered wife, the father of two indifferent sons, Sonalal's closest relationship is with his elderly snake, Raju--a defanged cobra with whom he has worked for 15 years. On this day, Sonalal and Raju set up shop in front of a popular tourist destination and for nine straight hours the charmer plays while the snake dances. At the end of the evening, just as he is about to stop for the day, Sonalal is tempted to perform one last time by the arrival of a busload of foreign journalists. At first, Raju refuses to cooperate and Sonalal is embarrassed. Then he begins to play "variations on Raju's favorite tune, such beautiful variations that, had they been recorded, might have guaranteed Sonalal's immortality. It was as if the finest music of his ancestors--seven generations of charmers--had condensed into the enchanting combination of notes now coming from his new been." Raju dances, the journalists shower the charmer with money and in his excitement, Sonalal begins to play wrong notes. Raju becomes enraged and bites; Sonalal, in a moment of madness bites back, severing the snake in two.

And therein lies the tale.

The Snake Charmer is Sanjay Nigam's deceptively simple novel about a deceptively simple man. Not for Nigam the verbal pyrotechnics of Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy; he tells his tale from just behind Sonalal's ear, opening up his character's heart and mind as well as his world in prose that is both simple and lyrical. Sonalal's moment of madness in front of the foreign journalists leads to his 15 minutes of fame: for a few days, his face and story are splashed across newspapers around the world, and for a few brief moments he has the admiration of his family, friends, and neighbors. But fame is no antidote to the tremendous guilt that gnaws at him; in fact, the greater his fame, the angrier Sonalal becomes at the world's incomprehension of the gravity of his crime. As his character seeks desperately for solace first in medicine, then in magic, and eventually in the arms of his favorite prostitute, Nigam limns a compassionate portrait of one man's crisis of faith and despair against a backdrop of modern-day India. By turns tough and tender, The Snake Charmer marks an impressive debut by one of India's most promising new storytellers. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Indian-born Nigam, a physician who teaches at Harvard, has written a rather derivative fable about the fleeting nature of fame and fortune and about a life "ruined by a single moment of stupidity." Expanded?perhaps overexpanded?from a short story originally published in Grand Street, Nigam's debut tells the tale of a renowned snake charmer in New Delhi, who, bitten by his beloved defanged cobra, bites it back in a fit of rage, splitting the snake in half and accidentally killing it. Impoverished and tormented by guilt and remorse, middle-aged Sonalal loses his sexual potency and his gift for playing music. He's haunted by recurrent nightmares in which the deceased snake's female mate exacts lethal revenge on him. While the exotic trappings of Sonalal's midlife crisis will certainly attract a Western audience, the novel is too contrived (and too long), and its self-consciously elegant prose is uncomfortably at odds with the teeming slums it so prettily describes. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 223 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); 1 edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140278915
• ISBN-13: 978-0140278910
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,997,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Parable, October 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Snake Charmer: A Novel (Hardcover)

At first I turned the pages to find the answers: the tricks to ridding guilt, the prayers to embrace fidelity, the trees to age with forgiveness & acceptance, etc. But "The Snake Charmer" reminded me that life is never a novel we get to read before or while it's happening to us. This book should penetrate your day with thoughts about the things we do or did. It might also make you want to drink your morning tea with an aging and affectionate cobra. . . or do you already?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to put down -- a great read!, January 27, 2000

By 

Amy Battis (Beverly, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Snake Charmer (Paperback)

I loved this book. Simply written with the simplest of plots, this book captivated me from the first page.

The story of a snake charmer who surprisingly finds fame but at the price of deep personal loss, this story had me reexamining priorities in light of the charmer's fates. Is fame more important than love? More important than being able to continue work you love? Success at what cost? Is it more important than family? And the charmer's less-than-stellar morality leads to questions of spousal and familial loyalty while exploring "true love." Following the charmer as he searches for his answers only adds to these questions.

It's been a long time since I've read such a good story with so many thought provoking issues. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's not intended to be such a profound book, but it certainly has caused me to take pause and reevaluate things.

I highly, highly recommend this book. Enjoy!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A look at the human condition, June 4, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Snake Charmer: A Novel (Hardcover)

The primary charachter is a less than wholesome street performer who is thought to be "the best snake charmer in India." Up till the moment when he kills his snake this could be true. Now, he has to face the world of his wife, children, and eventually himself. It is a sad tale of humanity on the edge. The almost nihilistic ending gives one pause to think about their own meaning of life. It's not about India, snake charming, or many other thoughts from reading the title -- it's about one human life attempting to find meaning while cicling in on itself like the snake eating it's own tail.