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Overview
Set in present-day Mumbai, Sacred Games tells the story of a notorious Hindu gangster and a police inspector whose lives unfold and eventually intersect with cataclysmic consequences. Reaching back in time to Partition and bringing to vivid life a profusion of characters and milieus, Chandra's extraordinary work depicts India with an unsurpassed richness of detail: its complexity and violence, the worlds of the poor and the wealthy, the heroes of Bollywood movies and the striving of human beings from every walk of life. As the story unfolds with surprising twists at every turn, the great game takes shape, confounding everyone's expectations. Winning is an illusion, and characters powerful and humble find themselves mere pawns, struggling to regain control of their destinies.Quintessentially Indian yet surprisingly universal, Chandra's book evokes brilliantly and with devastating realism the way we live now. A gripping epic saga, Sacred Games is filled with humour, tragedy and characters who prove to be all too human.
Finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Synopsis
A policeman, a criminal overlord, a Bollywood film star, beggars, cultists, spies, and terrorists—the lives of the privileged, the famous, the wretched, and the bloodthirsty interweave with cataclysmic consequences amid the chaos of modern-day Mumbai, in this soaring, uncompromising, and unforgettable epic masterwork of literary art.
The New York Times - Paul Gray
By paying homage to both Ian Fleming and James Joyce, Chandra risks alienating the constituencies of each of writing a thriller that s too serious and a serious novel that s too much in thrall to an absurd story. But in the post-9/11 era, madmen intent on blowing up all or even a small part of the world don t seem quite as unrealistic as they once did. If you keep that in mind, you may find Sacred Games as hard to put down as it is to pick up.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The author's million-dollar advance may have jump-started the buzz for this book, but we think Vikram Chandra's ambitious Indian crime novel more than measures up to its hype. At a whopping 900-plus pages, Sacred Games is a heavyweight in every sense of the word. Tracing the confrontation between powerful underworld crime boss Ganesh Gaitonde and Sartaj Singh, the world-weary policeman introduced in Chandra's 1997 short story collection, Love and Longing in Bombay, this sprawling epic meanders across the changing landscape of 20th-century India. Exciting, audacious, and challenging (untranslated Indian slang appears throughout), this Don DeLillostyled literary thriller captivates from first page to last.Booklist (starred review)
“Riveting...A splendidly big, finely made book destined to dazzle a big audience.”Paul Gray
By paying homage to both Ian Fleming and James Joyce, Chandra risks alienating the constituencies of each — of writing a thriller that’s too serious and a serious novel that’s too much in thrall to an absurd story. But in the post-9/11 era, madmen intent on blowing up all or even a small part of the world don’t seem quite as unrealistic as they once did. If you keep that in mind, you may find Sacred Games as hard to put down as it is to pick up.— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Mumbai in all its seedy glory is at the center of Vikram Chandra's episodic novel, which follows the fortunes of two opposing characters: the jaded Sikh policeman, Sartaj Singh, who first appeared in the story "Kama," and Ganesh Gaitonde, a famous Hindu Bhai who "dallied with bejewelled starlets, bankrolled politicians" and whose "daily skim from Bombay's various criminal dhandas was said to be greater than annual corporate incomes." Sartaj, still handsome and impeccably turned out, is now divorced, weary and resigned to his post, complicit in the bribes and police brutality that oil the workings of his city. Sartaj is ambivalent about his choices, but Gaitone is hungry for position and wealth from the moment he commits his first murder as a young man. A confrontation between the two men opens the novel, with Gaitonde taunting Sartaj from inside the protection of his strange shell-like bunker. Gaitonde is the more riveting character, and his first-person narrative voice lulls the reader with his intuitive understanding of human nature and the 1,001 tales of his rise to power, as he collects men, money and fame; creates and falls in love with a movie star; infiltrates Bollywood; works for Indian intelligence; matches wits with his Muslim rival, Suleiman Isa; and searches for fulfillment with the wily Guru Shridhar Shukla. Sartaj traces Gaitonde's movements and motivations, while taking on cases of murder, blackmail and neighborhood quarrels. The two men ruminate on the meaning of life and death, and Chandra connects them as he connects all the big themes of the subcontinent: the animosity of caste and religion, the poverty, the prostitution and mainly, the criminal elite, who organize themselves on the model of corporations and control their fiefdoms from outside the country. Chandra, who's won prizes and praise for his two previous books, Red Earth and Pouring Rain and Love and Longing in Bombay, spent seven years writing this 900-page epic of organized crime and the corruption that spins out from Mumbai into the world of international counterfeiting and terrorism, and it's obvious that he knows what he's talking about. He takes his chances creating atmosphere: the characters speak in the slang of the city ("You bhenchod sleepy son of maderchod Kumbhkaran," Gaitonde chastises). The novel eventually becomes a world, and the reader becomes a resident rather than a visitor, but living there could begin to feel excessive. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Library Journal
The city is Mumbai, but given the methods both cops and gangsters use in the illegal pursuit of money and the way young women use their bodies to climb the ladder to stardom in the film industry, one would think that the story is set in New York or California. Chandra (Love and Longing in Bombay) introduces us to Ganesh Gaitonde, a Hindu outlaw whose rise and subsequent fall from power in a triad is like a roller-coaster ride, and Sartaj Singh, a Sikh policeman investigating Gaitonde's possible involvement with terrorism. Chandra's gangster world is dynamic, occasionally absurd, and replete with social commentary and philosophic observations, but his cops appear aimless and melodramatic. Nevertheless, while his pen wanders between bloodbath and the kind of mixed-up romance you might find in pop fiction, he does manage to transcend the traditional crime caper by relating the novel to a wide range of contemporary issues, including the relationships among heroism, religion, and terrorism. Chandra also imbues his characters with humanity and color, even if his plot and writing style could do with tighter editing. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/06.]-Victor Or, Vancouver & Surrey P.L., B.C. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Globe & Mail (Toronto)
"Rich...Utterly convincing..A monumental portrait of interwoven lives that lingers with a reader long after the case is closed."Newsweek (International Edition)
"Unstinting in its ambition...flourishing in its characters…[An] intriguing act of literary decolonization…Sacred Games is cinematic in scope."Sven Birkerts
"Page after page it plucks me from the here and now."Sandip Roy
"Chandra gives a startling, blood-pumping fallible humanity to his characters."People Magazine
"Ambitious, sprawling...combines the attractions of 19th-century fiction and a modern police procedural."Maureen Corrigan
"Bold, fresh and big…SACRED GAMES deserves praise for its ambitions but also for its terrific achievement."Bruce Allen
"It’s a rare pleasure to be arrested by this novel’s thunderous momentum...Few readers will be unenthralled."New York Magazine
"makes palpable a very foreign city, explores deep moral questions...BUY IT."Eric Ormsby
"One of the most brilliant...tales I’ve read in years...SACRED GAMES is compulsively readable."John Freeman
"A terrific, brilliant earthmover of a book. Crime and Punishment crossed with The Godfather, with some Sopranos-inspired irony.""Carl Bromley
"Electrifying…Chandra pulls off some extraordinary writing…He…hands us the keys to the city and reveals its sordid mysteries."ABC Magazine
"A classical Bombay underworld epic...Raymond Chandler with songs."Elle
"A genre-bending, multilayered saga...expertly paced and nuanced...A sheer entertainment extravaganza."Newsweek International Edition
“Unstinting in its ambition...flourishing in its characters…[An] intriguing act of literary decolonization…Sacred Games is cinematic in scope.”Booklist
"Riveting...A splendidly big, finely made book destined to dazzle a big audience."Houston Chronicle
"Unfailingly interesting…Superbly realized…The novel bursts with characters…I almost never wanted to put it down."Los Angeles Times
"Chandra…knows exactly when to break rules and when to follow them…Chandra’s genius is in the way he trusts his reader."Cleveland Plain Dealer
"SACRED GAMES won’t deliver nirvana, but submerging in it, like the Ganges itself, can restore your wonder."ABC magazine
“A classical Bombay underworld epic...Raymond Chandler with songs.”Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“Rich...Utterly convincing..A monumental portrait of interwoven lives that lingers with a reader long after the case is closed.”BookPage
"Exhilaratingly ambitious and entertaining…[A] vivid portrait of the clash and jangle and excitement of modern-day Mumbai."Wall Street Journal
"Monumental…Chandra brilliantly evokes...Mumbai...in all its vibrant chaos."Blogcritics.org Books
"Masterfully crafted fiction…the resonance and elegance...of his writing…put across the full vulnerability and humanity of his characters."Grand Rapids Press
"Superb…complex, mesmerizing...a full-immersion experience, as if Dickens had written THE GODFATHER and placed it in India."Rocky Mountain News
"Intoxicating... SACRED GAMES offers up a world worthy of the effort required to take it all in."New York magazine
“makes palpable a very foreign city, explores deep moral questions...BUY IT.”Sunday Oregonian
"Dazzling…Chandra’s sure-handed writing injects the novel with layers of depth and meaning."San Diego Union-Tribune
"A work of masterfully crafted fiction...a gritty and grounded epic reminiscent of voluminous and character-rich nineteenth century literature."Seattle Times
"A pulsing thriller...Quite enough to enrapture a reader for 900 pages...the payoff is grand and satisfying."Salon.com
"Exquisite...A passionate tribute to contemporary India."Entertainment Weekly
"Ravishing…Extraordinary...A chaotic and luminous whole."New York Times
"As sprawling as the heat-drenched city it richly portrays."New York Times Book Review
"SACRED GAMES [is] as hard to put down as it is to pick up."Daily News
"The pacing and mother lode of cinematic details in the narrative make the journey...worth taking, even more than once."San Antonio Express-News
"A remarkable blend of literary novel and potboiler."Atlantic Monthly
"Well-written entertainment…a plot of Victorian complexity."Denver Post
"A grand story...carefully and passionately told…The temptation upon turning the last page will be to return to the first."Tennessean
"Lavish, accomplished, and…elegant…[SACRED GAMES] offers Western readers a panoramic view of contemporary India."Christian Science Monitor
"An irresistible story that you simply cannot keep out of your head...It is, more than anything else, literary magic."Parade
"Spiced with flavors of the subcontinent, this epic novel-part crime thriller, part human drama, part travelogue-is entirely entertaining."People
“Ambitious, sprawling...combines the attractions of 19th-century fiction and a modern police procedural.”Newsday
"SACRED GAMES envisions a world—an underworld actually—that is complete, persuasive, and startlingly original."Library Journal
A hardened criminal and a jaded cop play a game of cat-and-mouse in this sprawling novel about organized crime and the meaning of life in modern Mumbai. (LJ 9/15/06)Book Details
Published
December 1, 2007
Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers
Pages
992
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780061130366