Obedient Father - Softcover

Akhil Sharma

3.34

1,180 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571206786 ISBN 13: 9780571206780

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2002

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Ram Karan, a corrupt official in the Delhi Education Department, is a sad, bumbling, character tortured by a terrible secret. When the country is plunged into confusion following Rajiv Gandhi's murder, he finds himself trapped in a series of deadly political betrayals with little or no protection.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of 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 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 was selected as a 'Writer on the Verge' in the Village Voice Fiction issue, 2000.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.