Ghachar ghochar
By: Vivek Shanbhag ; translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur
Contributors: Perur, Srinath
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 119
ISBN-13: 9780143111689
Subjects: Social conditions; Families; Fiction
Work titles: Ghācar ghōcar
Description: For readers of Akhil Sharma, Mohsin Hamid, and Teju Cole, a haunting novel about an upwardly mobile family splintered by success in rapidly changing India. "It's true what they say--it's not we who control money, it's the money that controls us." In this masterful novel by the acclaimed Indian writer Vivek Shanbhag, a close-knit family is delivered from near-destitution to sudden wealth after the narrator's uncle founds a successful spice company. As the narrator--a sensitive young man who is never named--his sister, his parents, and his uncle move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house and begin to grow accustomed to their newfound wealth, the family dynamics begin to shift. Allegiances and desires realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things begin to become "ghachar ghochar"--a nonsense phrase that, to the narrator, comes to mean something entangled beyond repair. Told in clean, urgent prose, and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings--and consequences--of financial gain in contemporary India"--
Notes: Translation from Kannada of: Ghācar ghōcar.

"A Penguin original"--Page 4 of cover.