Author: Nayantara Sahgal
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 189
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9780143102755
Description
‘She missed the sense of values Shivraj had planted like roses with his two hands. It was their fragrance, something as ephemeral as that, that had bound the country together in a unity, not any hidebound principle or rule from a book.’
Shivraj is dead and with him the values with which he had governed the country for over a decade. While his successors destroy the idealistic world he had built, Shivraj’s circle of intimate friends – his sister Devi, the education minister; Usman Ali, vice chancellor of Delhi University; and Michael Calvert, and Michael Calvert, an English writer – struggle to find order in the chaos, even as Rishad, Devi’s son, loses himself in it.
Juxtaposing the conflict of personal relationships with the larger canvas of corrupt politics in A Situation in New Delhi, Nayantara Sahgal masterfully weaves a tale that grips the reader from start to finish.
COMMENTS
‘She is brilliant complex and questioning’ – Pearl S. Buck
‘A brilliant and provocative piece of fact-based fiction’ – Financial Times
‘A moving, even inspiring novel’ – Sunday Times
‘A Situation in New Delhi is about personal relationships in the context of present-day politics. Ms Sahgal comments lucidly on the rabble-rousing ideologists, the rioting student theorists and those for whom politics remains a perfected blueprint on paper to be imposed by whatever means’ – The Scotsman
‘A warm, sensual and energetic work which explores a rich potion of ideals, mixed in a political crucible’ – Liverpool Daily Post
‘This is the story of a woman Cabinet Minister struggling to preserve cherished ideals under pressure from looming violence and venal compromise. It is a moving, even inspiring novel: an affirmation those ideals are always worth fighting for’ – The Sunday Times
‘Sahgal uses the past (in A Situation in New Delhi) to highlight the contrast with the present malaise. Her essential female sensibility probes the characters from the inside’
– The Hindustan Times Weekly
‘The suspense of A Situation in New Delhi is not that of swelling anticipation, but dreaded expectancy – the dread of impending doom and decay’ – Mirror