VILLAINY

DescriptionWalkers in a Delhi neighbourhood park come upon a body on a mid-wintermorning—an unidentified body, unremarkable but for an extraordinary scarright between the eyes.A delinquent teenager—who prefers, to the rest of living, an Ecstasy pill witha beer, and the interior of an expensive car with a gun in his pocket—leaveshome one evening for a joyride in his father’s Mercedes.In the nineteen years separating these episodes, five killings take place—andone near-fatal battery—none of which would have happened if a schoolbus hadn’t been in the wrong lane. Deals are struck between masters andservants, money changes hands, assurances are given and broken. The wheelsof justice turn, forward, backwards and sideways, pause and turn again. Oldalliances are tested and new ones are formed in prison cells, mortuaries andcourt rooms. And every life is a gamble, for no one is entirely innocent.A meticulously crafted literary thriller, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s seventhnovel is a riveting story of crime and retribution, and a meditation on therandomness of evil, death and redemption. It will keep you spellbound till theend.