Author: Timeri N Murari
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN/UPC (if available): 014303149X
Description
Smoking a joint in the attic of his Westchester home, seventeen-year-old Nikhil Figgis finds a tattered copy of a novel called Georgetown among the folds of a red silk sari in a long-forgotten suitcase. Eleven years on, he has arrived in India armed with a stage adaptation of the novel to look for its author, who is also the father he has never known.
But in India, as Nikhil discovers, destiny is master, and within a few short hours he is sucked into a whirlwind of events that leaves him bewildered and breathless. He misplaces the suitcase containing his precious script, the police mistake him for a terrorist, a baby crocodile turns up in his bathtub, and when he finally tracks his father down with the help of the attractive and spunky detective Apu, the temperamental and reclusive man refuses to acknowledge Nikhil as his son. But Nikhil has made up his mind-he will take in his stride all the mayhem India has to offer, for he must help his father remember again what it feels like to love and trust. Besides, he is irresistibly drawn to Apu, whose own scars need healing.
Skillfully interweaving drama, romance and comedy, and packed with quirky, unforgettable characters, The Arrangements of Love is a wonderful novel about family and home and the intricacies of ordinary human relationships.
REVIEWS
An exotic, passionate novel, sensual and violent by turns, always compelling.
-The Guardian
Only a masterly historical novelist like Timeri Murari could skate so teasingly near the lip of a volcano. The structure of the novel is as fascinating as the building it describes.
-Bill Aitken, Sunday Observer
An expertly crafted novel with richly textured details, especially of violence and eroticism.
-The Telegraph
A book of powerful simplicity.
-Gloucestershire Echo
One can read into the symbolic undertones, and find this a complex and disturbing novel.
-Asia Magazine