An Obedient Father - Hardcover

Sharma, Akhil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374105014 ISBN 13: 9780374105013

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000

Synopsis

Ram Karan works for the New Delhi school system but supports his widowed daughter and grandaughter by taking bribes for a small time Congress party boss, until his involvement in a terrifying political campaign could cost him his life. A first novel.

About this title

Review:

Readers opening this first novel from Akhil Sharma find themselves face to face with a wildly unappealing main character. Ram Karan is a corrupt civil servant, chubby and self-hating. "I had been Mr. Gupta's moneyman for a little less than a year and was no good." Ram has no illusions about his failings: "My panic in negotiations was so apparent that even people who were eager to bribe me became resentful." Things at home aren't so hot either: Ram's wife has recently died, as has his son-in-law, and so his daughter Anita and granddaughter, Asha, have moved in with him. The first chapter of An Obedient Father is lugubrious and oily and awkward, like its narrator; then suddenly the whole thing breaks wide open. Drunk one night, Ram touches Asha with his penis. Anita walks in, and the family's secret is out all at once, like a just-freed, very angry cat: Ram forced Anita to have sex with him repeatedly when she was 12.

Sharma, a Delhi-born New York investment banker, has written a novel that's satisfyingly ambitious and full of really lovely imagery (tulips, for instance, are "heavy-hearted"). He squares Ram's downfall in the context of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. As India descends into political turmoil, Ram is made accountable for corruption both at work and at home. What gives the book its engine is its even-tempered handling of Ram himself: he is always complex, never a moral lesson or a villain. By the time Anita exacts her quietly devilish revenge, we feel neither glee nor pity, just sadness. Sharma doesn't have perfect control of his material--the transitions between personal and political can be abrupt, the tension between father and daughter unravels sloppily. Still, this is a new voice of great subtlety and care. --Claire Dederer

About the Author:

Akhil Sharma's stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker and have been included in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize collections. Sharma lives in New York and is an investment banker.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0374105014
• ISBN 13: 9780374105013
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 282