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The Peacock Throne (Paperback)

by Sujit Saraf (Author)
Key Phrases: ruh gulaab, aloo purl, other kothas, Sohan Lal, Kartar Singh, Chandni Chowk (more...)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
October 31, 1984 begins like any other day for Gopal Pandey as he sets up his tea stall in a lane off Chandni Chowk -- the most magnificent and crowded street in all Delhi. At its head lies Red Fort, once the home of the gem-encrusted Peacock Throne, symbol of the Mughal Empire's dazzling might, and of its downfall. By the end of the day, Indira Gandhi has been assassinated, violent riots have erupted and Gopal is the bemused possessor of a large sum of money. Fourteen turbulent years and four dramatic turning points in Indian history later, this illiterate, bumbling man stands on the verge of immense political power. Gopal's unlikely journey is a tale of accidents, scheming, murder and tragedy, religious and political rivalries, corruption and hubris. Irreverent, farcical and as enlightening as it is entertaining, THE PEACOCK THRONE is a novel of breathtaking scope and reach, which looks deep into the heart of human nature and into the soul of modern India.

About the Author
Sujit Saraf was born in India in 1969. He was educated in Darjeeling and Delhi, and graduated as an engineer from IIT in 1991. He subsequently studied at Berkely, receiving a PhD in 1997. His first novel, Limbo, was published by HarperCollins India in 1994 and in 1995 he co-founded the theatre company, Naatak, for which he has written and directed plays as well as two feature films. In 1999, after two years of conducting research for NASA, he moved back to India to teach at IITT, but a year later returned to the United States. He currently works as a research scientist on space missions and satellite control, and lives with his wife in San Jose, California.

Product Details

Paperback: 754 pages
Publisher: Sceptre; First Edition edition (January 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0340899697
ISBN-13: 978-0340899694
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,553,719 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
ruh gulaab, aloo purl, other kothas, maayi baap, sri akaal, police chauki, kurta pocket, chaff stall, gol gappas, demolition drive, foggy spectacles, amar rahe, legalise prostitution, paan stall, pigeon fights, silk kurta, saree shop, white saree, white embroidered cap, secular candidate, silk sarees, four lakhs, chai stall, silk dhoti, few lakhs

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sohan Lal, Kartar Singh, Chandni Chowk, The Peacock Throne, Gopal Das, Suleman Mian, Jugal Kishor, Gopal Bhai, Red Fort, Harilal Gupta, Kucha Bansilal, Ibrahim Mian, Khari Baoli, Jama Masjid, Gita Didi, Naresh Agrawal, Ram Bibek, Ramvilas Babu, Lala Surajmal, Town Hall, Chandra Chowk, Pushpa Rani, Ramesh Babu, Congress Party, Fatehpuri Masjid

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!

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3.0 out of 5 stars A raw - a very raw - slice of Indian life, December 31, 2008

By	Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Peacock Throne (Paperback)

"Looks deep into the soul of modern India" says one of the blurbs on the back of the book. If so, the picture of that soul does no credit to India. For all the sardonic and sometimes compassionate humour with which Saraf describes his immense cast of characters, this is an almost unrelieved picture of dog eat dog, of dishonesty and deceit practised and also expected by everybody, of greed and exploitation, of the mentality of rupee-counting shop-keepers, of venal policemen, of pimps and prostitutes, of corruption and of political skulduggery not stopping short of murders, of rent-a-crowds paid to join in demonstrations and riots, of ignorant youths being tricked into becoming `martyrs', and of the bigotry of communal or caste passions. There are so many victims: Sikhs suffer mob violence after the assassination of Indira Gandhi; children from Bangladesh find themselves parentless in the ant heap that is Old Delhi and have to scrounge for a living as best they can; small shopkeepers are helpless before demolition squads.

The lives of all these people are described in five sections against the political background of fourteen years of Indian history: from the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 - through the riots about the Mandal Commission in 1992 which had recommended positive discrimination in favour of disadvantaged sections of Indian society - then through the destruction by Hindus of the Babra Masjid Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, - then through the ruthless demolition, without any advanced warning, of hundreds of mainly Muslim shops in 1996 - lastly, to the election campaign of 1998, which produced a hung parliament in which the biggest party was the Hindu nationalist party (called in this book the IPP, but more usually referred to as the BJP), and whose local politicians play the major role in this novel.

All this comes across well enough, and the book is intricately plotted through its 750 pages - so intricately, indeed, that I often lost track of the threads. The book is far too long (almost entirely written in the historic present) and is not easy reading. Some of the episodes seem little more than padding, not essential to the story and therefore become increasingly wearisome. I kept going only because the climaxes, long though they are in coming, are very well done; but in between them the book often loses momentum. Then there are all those names to remember; all those Indian words that need to be looked up in the glossary at the end (and most of them are not there anyway); all those places in Old Delhi, not all of which are shown on the map in the front. Towards the end of the book anyone not already familiar with the complexities of Indian party politics may find them bewildering - but we certainly learn a lot about this and many other aspects of life in Old Delhi.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Peacocks and lesser fowl, November 2, 2008

By	baroquemaniac (Bavaria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Peacock Throne (Paperback)

The title 'Peacock Throne' hints at cinematic royal melodrama, and what is printed on the cover of my paperback might make one expect a racy, fast-paced thriller. To be sure, there is no dearth of vile, greedy, scheming, devious and even murderous humanity, and castes, ethnicities and religions at regular intervals clash violently and disastrously, but on the whole this Asian vanity fair of middle and lower classes unfolds quite leisurely; and though there are several interlocking plot strands running through the book from the first to the last pages, there is no all-embracing arc of suspense.

Add to this a fair amount of episodic material, and it becomes obvious that for some readers the journey through 750 densely printed pages might become somewhat exhausting. I myself was never in serious danger of giving up and often quite spellbound by the analytical, amused and at times downright cruel detachment of the narrator's voice; but I still wonder if the book's moral and emotional impact might have benefitted from a slightly firmer focus on guileless tea stall owner Gopal Pandey, buffeted by fate and other powers beyond his grasp and eventually dragged into a ludicrous political campaign.

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