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Book Reviewed by:Part thriller and part erotic romance, full of dark humor and knife-edged suspense, The Story of My Assassins is an awesome adventure into the heart of today's India.
Based on actual events, The Story of My Assassins tells the story of a journalist who learns that the police have captured five hitmen on their way to kill him. Landing like a bombshell on his comfortable life, just as he's started a steamy affair with a brilliant woman, the news prompts him to launch an urgent investigation into the lives of his aspiring murderers - a ragtag group of street thugs and village waifs - and their mastermind. Who wanted him dead, and why?
But the investigation forces him to reexamine his own life, too - to confront his own notion of himself, his job, and his treatment of the women in his life, as well as his own complex feelings about the country that crafted his would-be killers.
Part thriller and part erotic romance, full of dark humor and knife-edged suspense, The Story of My Assassins is a piercing literary novel that takes us from the lavish, hedonistic palaces of India's elite to its seediest slums. It is a novel of corruption, passion, power, and ambition; of extreme poverty and obscene wealth.
It is an awesome adventure into the heart of today's India.
In [Tarjun J. Tejpal's] latest novel, The Story of My Assassins – a hardboiled account of life on the fringes – he draws on his journalistic background to create a fictional panorama that questions perceptions of victimhood. But this is not a thriller with easy resolutions and clear culprits. Instead, Tejpal creates a naturalistic portrait of a society plagued by abuses of power, poverty and village tensions...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Karen Rigby).
India's national capital territory of Delhi, which includes the capital city of New Delhi, is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. It has over sixteen million people working in information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism, among other fields. It boasts globally renowned universities and medical centers, world heritage sites, fabulously wealthy people, and the world's second largest exhibition of books held biannually. At the same time, many of its residents live in slums without water, electricity, or sanitation. One of the most dangerous cities in India, Delhi has high crime rates including serious crimes such as kidnapping and crimes against women.
Delhi is a northern Indian city, with...
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He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming
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ayantara Sahgal, author of Rich Like Us
For the awesome story it tells and the stunning impact of its prose this is, quite simply, the best Indian novel in English I have ever read.
