He admits: "I come here for respite from domestic skirmishes": life revolves around family, and his is a tight-knit one of co-dependency, a family that has made good - or at least moved up in the world - but balances uneasily there. The narrator of Ghachar Ghochar begins his account from Coffee House, the restaurant that is his regular haunt - and escape. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. (.) The book in our hands is elegant, lean, balletic" - Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review (.) Shanbhag is excellent on the inner logic of families, and of language, how even the most innocent phrases come freighted with history. "This spiny, scary story of moral decline, crisply plotted and no thicker than my thumb, has been heralded as the finest Indian novel in a decade, notable for a book in bhasha, one of India’s vernacular languages.(.) By unnaming the narrator, Shanbhag evokes a loss of personal identity that creates an everyman." - Preti Taneja, New Statesman "This is a timely book, written with great depth and restraint, and skilfully translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur (.) Shanbhag portrays the existential crisis of Indian masculinity, seen from the inside.(.) Ghachar Ghochar may well be one of the finest literary works you will ever encounter." - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times "Literary perfection is elusive, yet it is possible, as Vivek Shanbhag demonstrates in his magnificent novella, where comedy is undercut by seething menace and overwhelming regret at a failure to act decently.
(.) The translation by Srinath Perur unerringly captures the shifting nuances that make Shanbhag’s telling so rich." - Girish Karnad, Indian Express
(.) Ghachar Ghochar is a sensitive analysis of how our middle-class existence is defined by a single shruti: anxiety. It is short, and the narrative is suffused with a gentle irony, with an undercurrent of pathos and humour enlivening the events which are presented in a few delicate, deft strokes. "This is a novel with a lightness of touch rarely found in our fiction.(.) Shanbhag is the real deal, this gem of a novel resounding with chilling truths." - Lucy Scholes, The Independent "Brevity serves Shanbhag’s storytelling to great effect, not least because much of what makes the narrative so gripping lies in what he leaves unsaid.The deceptively simple story line and language, along with the book’s 28,000-word length, should make even a non-reader feel right at home." - Prajwal Parajuly, Hindustan Times "Serious readers will appreciate the author’s ability to tell so much by eliminating, his skill at dialogue and the spare prose.Srinath Perur’s translation is fluent and often elegant, occasional infelicities notwithstanding" - Keshava Guha, The Hindu Shanbhag can be brutally unsentimental, but also moving and genuinely funny.
(.) This is a superb novel, unsettling and even claustrophobic, as hermetically enclosed as the family it describes.
Its concision is a function of how much Vivek Shanbhag leaves unsaid, and how much is suggested or implied. At well under 30,000 words, the book is liable to be considered a novella, but it has the scope and ambition of a novel rather than a long story. "Little in Ghachar Ghochar is as it first seems.(.) Srinath Perur’s excellent translation presents a wonderfully measured, sometimes mannered diction" - Deborah Smith, The Guardian "The opening chapter demonstrates how the short novel is the perfect form for Shanbhag’s particular talents: precise observations, accumulation of detail, narrative progression by way of oblique tangents."What could’ve been another admonitory tale is elevated by an emphasis on minutia (.) It occasionally comes at the cost of a clear narrative, but is a minor point when the writing has moments of wonderfully dark, often unexpected, cynicism." - Dan Einav, Financial Times.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.