Book review: "God's Little Soldier"

{Pic stolen from Rediff interview below)


After a long time attempting to do a review.

Kiran Nagarkar is truly a cool guy. He's an 'authentic' guy, a person of substance.
'Cuckold' is the high point of his writing so far -- an amazing book. The other books are so wildly imaginative and experimental that they're a difficult read. 'Saat Sakkum Trechallis' (Seven Sixes are Forty Three -- what a cool name) was the most out there of them.

Anyway what to say about GLS ? It has Nagarkar's trademark of hyperbolic language -- nice sometimes but can get irritating after the novelty wears off. I don't have the book with me right now so unfortunately I can't do any quotes. Its also incredibly verbose, another Nagarkar trademark -- I skipped whole pages without losing the basic track. As Nagarkar himself remarks in the afterword -- he was once told by a critic that if he wrote shorter books the critics would read them instead of panning them.
The book is a courageous attempt to plumb what a fundamentalist/terrorist mentality might look like. It didn't quite work (for me), but that's okay. Its a page turner, as his books tend to be -- you read it compulsively.
I think its well worth reading, but probably only after reading Cuckold -- otherwise the eccentricities of his writing might put you off without the countervailing awe that you feel after reading Cuckold.

Here's an excellent interview with Kiran Nagarkar
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2006/may/02kiran1.htm

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To Arvind: since you also liked William Dalrymple, you should try Bruce Chatwin. In a review somewhere Dalrymple was placed in the Chatwin class, and Dalrymple himself once alludes flatteringly to Chatwin in 'City of Djinns' (he sits in the same library that Chatwin visited in New Delhi in an attempt to shake off a case of writers block). I still haven't got around to it though myself.