Skip to content
ISSN NO. : 0970-4175 (Print)

 

Search

The Book Review, Monthly Review of Important BooksThe Book Review, Monthly Review of Important Books
The Book Review, Monthly Review of Important Books
  • HOME
  • THE BOOK REVIEW
    • ABOUT
    • FOUNDER TRUSTEES
    • THE JOURNAL
  • SUBSCRIPTIONS
    • PRINT & DIGITAL EDITION
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • ARCHIVES
    • Table of Contents
    • Reviews
  • MEDIA & EVENTS
    • EVENTS
  • CONTACT
  • ADVERTISEMENT
  • HOME
  • THE BOOK REVIEW
    • ABOUT
    • FOUNDER TRUSTEES
    • THE JOURNAL
  • SUBSCRIPTIONS
    • PRINT & DIGITAL EDITION
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • ARCHIVES
    • Table of Contents
    • Reviews
  • MEDIA & EVENTS
    • EVENTS
  • CONTACT
  • ADVERTISEMENT

‘… the thing you crave’: Soliloquies of Our Times

Review Details

Book Name: PRELUDE TO A RIOT: A NOVEL
Author name: Annie Zaidi
Book Year: 2019
Book Price: Rs.399
Reviewer name: Asma Rasheed
Volume No: 44
Publisher Name: Aleph Book Company, Delhi
Book Pages: 184

Two houses, both alike in wealth, are the scenes of Annie Zaidi’s newest work, a novel. There is going to be civil strife, for there is already blood in the streets and the air is heavy with grudges that foretell new mutinies to come. Nevertheless, it would not be fair to make two households the central protagonists of a novel that is not exactly about a pair of star-crossed lovers. For one, the narrative is structured through the soliloquies of the dozen-odd protagonists, with the choral chapters of Class 10B, or letters to the editor of the local newspaper or the editor’s responses interspersed in between. And two, the central protagonist is more an impalpable zeitgeist—resentment and reprisal, perplexity and perturbation—that is and may soon spiral out to become in the novel, and perhaps outside it as well.

Zaidi sets her story in a small town of banana and coconut trees, pepper vines and family-owned estates that run on the labour of migrant workers. The town is full of talk about ‘[b]loody illegals’ who have ‘come across the border’. Their barefoot and half-naked bodies are ‘carved out of black wood’ (p. 81) and their spines ‘made of some different stuff’ pop out of their skin (p. 83). Sixty of them, muses Vinny, the son of one household, do the work of one hundred local workers during the planting season even though they are paid less. Then there are the ‘spoilt rotten’ local tribal labourers who keep moving through the forests and yet claim to be ‘indigenous’. To add insult to injury, Vinny’s thoughts roil over, the government has issued them poverty cards, old age pension cards, twenty-five kilos of free rice, free sugar and kerosene, free schools and lunch for their children. Vinny’s family also runs a homestay comprising six cottages, prospering on the labour of his wife, Bavna, who finds the foreign tourists ‘a pain’. As their obsession with immortalizing the mundane leads her to exclaim, ‘Oh dear lord … Ant, bee, spoon, plate, donkey, car, leaf, moon…They…point a camera at it’ (p. 59).

Please Login or Register to Read Entire Article !

Username:
Password:
Register
Lost your password?

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:Memories RemainNextNext post:Achieving Transcendental Bliss

Related posts

‘Peace is Indivisible, So is Freedom…’
March 4, 2020
Contours of A Volatile Relationship
March 4, 2020
Rooted in Civilizational Evolution
March 4, 2020
Enhancing Nuclear Security and Saftey
March 4, 2020
Understanding the Rise of the BJP
March 4, 2020
Nuances of Constituency Service
March 4, 2020

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

clear formPost comment

Current Issue
  • Gandhi’s Tryst with Modernity April 5, 2021
  • How a Farman Gave an Inch and Lost a Mile April 5, 2021
Search in website

ABOUT US | DISCLAIMER | ADVERTISEMENT

All Right Reserved with The Book Review Literacy Trust | Powered by Digital Empowerment Foundation

FacebookTwitter