Synopses & Reviews
A policeman, a criminal overlord, a Bollywood film star, beggars, cultists, spies, and terrorists the lives of the privileged, the famous, the wretched, and the bloodthirsty interweave with cataclysmic consequences amid the chaos of modern-day Mumbai, in this soaring, uncompromising, and unforgettable epic masterwork of literary art.
Review
"[A] riveting epic....Chandra has created a compulsively involving literary thriller by drawing on the Mahabharata and aiming for the amplitude of Victorian novels....A splendidly big, finely made book destined to dazzle a big audience." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Chandra's gangster world is dynamic, occasionally absurd, and replete with social commentary and philosophic observations....Chandra also imbues his characters with humanity and color, even if his plot and writing style could do with tighter editing. Recommended." Library Journal
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"One of the coolest things about Sacred Games is the crash course it offers in 21st century Indian society and especially the life of Mumbai....Chandra's genius is in the way he trusts his readers." Los Angeles Times
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"[A] ravishing, overexuberant stab at the Great Indian Novel, an extraordinary work of fiction that will reward you in full for your investment of time, though not without occasionally testing your patience. (Grade: B+)" Entertainment Weekly
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"[An] immense, demanding novel....The appeal of Sacred Games lies in its mix of several commercially reliable formulas...along with considerable helpings of sex and violence plus enough genre-bending twists to keep pulp aficionados off balance and intrigued." Paul Gray, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[O]ne of those books you immerse yourself in, a passport to an alien world and, like life, you imagine it could go on forever." Newsday
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"Chandra manages to forge an intimacy between the reader and the two often morally unattractive men who rage across these 900 pages....Sacred Games is both riveting and brilliantly vile." Time Out
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"Unstinting in its ambition...flourishing in its characters...[an] intriguing act of literary decolonization....Sacred Games is cinematic in scope." Newsweek (International Edition)
Review
"The appeal of Sacred Games lies in its mix of several commercially reliable formulas...along with considerable helpings of sex and violence plus enough genre-bending twists to keep pulp aficionados off balance and intrigued." Paul Gray, New York Times
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"It is a terrific, brilliant, earthmover of a book...and it has understandably made Chandra quite a bit famous back in India." San Antonio Express-News
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"It's not everyday that one reads a 900-page tome that's this good." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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"Sacred Games can be read and enjoyed as an edge-of-your-seat thriller....But Chandra's sure-handed writing injects the novel with layers of depth and meaning; he captures history, politics, current events race, class and religion." The Oregonian
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"Sacred Games is monstrously entertaining, conjuring images of a literary duet between John Irving and Vikram Seth with a dollop of Mario Puzo thrown in for good measure." The Christian Science Monitor
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"Sacred Games is like one of John Irving's novels: Either you adore the oversized characters and abundance of material, or you find the whole shebang overwrought and verbose....My problem is that some of the characters are simply less compelling than others." USA Today
Synopsis
A policeman, a criminal overlord, a Bollywood film star, beggars, cultists, spies, and terrorists the lives of the privileged, the famous, the wretched, and the bloodthirsty interweave with cataclysmic consequences amid the chaos of modern-day Mumbai, in this soaring, uncompromising, and unforgettable epic masterwork of literary art."
Synopsis
Now a Netflix original series
"SACRED GAMES is] as hard to put down as it is to pick up."
-- New York Times Book Review
"Bold, fresh and big...SACRED GAMES deserves praise for its ambitions but also for its terrific achievement"
-- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air.
Seven years in the making, Sacred Games is an epic of exceptional richness and power. Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh--and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.
Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs on the Mumbai police force, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But "the silky Sikh" is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip-off as to the secret hide-out of the legendary boss of G-Company, he's determined that he'll be the one to collect the prize.
Vikram Chandra's keenly anticipated new novel is a magnificent story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side. Drawing inspiration from the classics of nineteenth-century fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra's own life and research on the streets of Mumbai, Sacred Games evokes with devastating realism the way we live now but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.
About the Author
Vikram Chandra is the author of the novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (Commonwealth Writers' Prize; David Higham Prize), and the short story collection Love and Longing in Bombay (Commonwealth Writers' Prize; New York Times Notable Book). Born in New Delhi, he divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, where he teaches at the University of California.