Kindle. I remember (perhaps faultily) enjoying his previous novels: Family Planning (2008) and The Association of Small Bombs (2016). This one is perhaps a lengthy and not great expansion on the first.
After a first-person intro that sketches how things are going to go we get a series of character studies intermingled with some minor-note action. It's set mostly in the airless Delhi complex that appears to be the sole legacy of nation-builder SP Chopra to his children with a completely vanilla take on Desi in London and nowhereland Michigan, from (ballpark) the 1970s to mid-1990s. I didn't feel any of the characters popped and none did anything particularly interesting or novel; stuff just happens. The politics is mostly described and not explained, excepting one incident where the BJP needed to manufacture a distraction. At times he seems to be drawing a line from the Nehru regime to Modi via the naysayers, Hindutva and Sonia Gandhi. Humourless.
Jonathan Dee at the New York Times. Goodreads.
