Synopses & Reviews
In flight from the tame familiarity of home in Bombay, a twenty-six-year-old cricket journalist chucks his job and arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerizing beauty. Amid beautiful, decaying wooden houses in Georgetown, on coastal sugarcane plantations, and in the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond hunters, he grows absorbed with the fantastic possibilities of this new place where descendants of the enslaved and indentured have made a new world. Ultimately, to fulfill his purpose, he prepares to mount an adventure of his own. His journey takes him beyond Guyanese borders, and his companion will be the feisty, wild-haired Jan.
In this dazzling novel, propelled by a singularly forceful voice, Rahul Bhattacharya captures the heady adventures of travel, the overheated restlessness of youth, and the paradoxes of searching for lifes meaning in the escape from home.
The Sly Company of People Who Care is the winner of the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the 2011 Hindu Literary Prize. It was shortlisted for 2011 The Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize, and was selected as a Kansas City Star Best Fiction Book of the Year and a Kirkus Best Fiction Book of the Year.
Review
"A deft synthesis of travelogue and bildungsroman, by turns antic and introspective . . . so satisfying." —The Wall Street Journal "Bhattacharyas voice is thick with bizarre humor, poetic pidgin, and images lush with faraway magic." —The Washington Post "A wonderfully uncategorizable book . . . Bhattacharyas gift for reproducing the rhythms and intricacies of his characters speech . . . places him in the company of Mark Twain." —The New Yorker"Bhattacharyas writing bursts with as much passion as the tropical downpours he describes. . . . Some of the most beguiling prose to emerge from the Caribbean." —The Guardian (London)"A love letter to Guyana . . . The Sly Company of People Who Care is beautifully written and brims with charm. . . . Fascinating." —Financial Times (London)
Synopsis
"So original and spirited, so thrillingly alive . . . An exhilarating first novel." —Minneapolis Star TribuneA twenty-six-year-old cricket journalist chucks his job in Bombay and arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerizing beauty. Amid the alluring decay of Georgetown, on coastal sugarcane plantations, and in dark rain forests scavenged by diamond hunters, he grows absorbed with the fantastic possibilities of this new place, and prepares to mount an adventure of his own, quite beyond Guyanese borders. A dazzling novel propelled by a singularly energetic and inventive voice, The Sly Company of People Who Care is "entertaining, smart, irreverent about race and place, and well written in the extreme" (The Boston Globe).
About the Author
Born in 1979, Rahul Bhattacharya is the author of the cricket-tour book Pundits from Pakistan, which was voted one of the Ten Best Cricket Books of all time in The Wisden Cricketer (London). He lives in Delhi, India. This is his first novel.