The Assassination of Indira Gandhi Stories, 1985-2018

For almost four decades, Upamanyu Chatterjee has been an utterly distinctive literary voice, with few equals among contemporary writers of fiction. In these splendid long stories, he investigates, as only he can, the absurd comedy and the grand horrors of the human condition. The book opens with a story set in 1615 which follows Thomas Roe, the puffed-up English Ambassador to the court of Jahangir, as he bumbles through a subcontinent far larger than his imagination can accommodate; and it concludes with the title story, set in 1984, in which a young Sikh, recovering from jaundice and ennui in his parents’ home in Mussoorie, listens disinterestedly to news of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the massacre of Sikhs that follows.