The Burning Elephant (Paperback)

Christopher Raja

ISBN 10: 1922146927 / ISBN 13: 9781922146922

Published by Giramondo Publishing Co, Artarmon, 2015

About this Item

Paperback. The Burning Elephant is set in Kolkata before andafter the assassination of Indira Gandhi, which led to widespread violenceagainst India's Sikh population. The novel is told from the point of view of ayoung boy Govinda, whose father is the headmaster of a local school. It beginswith the intrusion into the schoolyard of an elephant that has escaped from itsowner, and is seen as such a danger that he is immediately shot, then burnt bythe police. This outbreak of violence in the idyllic world of childhood setsthe tone for the novel as a whole, which gives the innocent yet knowingperspectives of Govinda in his engagement with the crowded and complex life ofSerpent Lane outside the school, his awareness of the breakdown of therelationship between his parents, his sense that his own privileged life isunder threat. The way the tensions in his family are rendered against thebackdrop of the larger social tensions in India, while at the same timemaintaining Govinda's child-like point of view, is particularly compelling. Itis the outbreak of violence after Indira Gandhi's death which finally causesGovinda's father to migrate to Australia and it is the implicit lesson ofthis novel, never spelt out, but felt throughout, that such horror is often acentral fact of migration to this country. The Burning Elephant Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781922146922

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Burning Elephant (Paperback)
• Publisher: Giramondo Publishing Co, Artarmon
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1922146927
• ISBN 13: 9781922146922
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

An escaped elephant enters Govinda’s schoolyard, and frightens everyone. The young boy watches on in horror as the elephant is shot and then cremated. Is this a sign for dark days ahead? He has been having a hard time trying to please his father, the headmaster, and figure out his mother – something seems wrong with her but Govinda is not sure what. Mumbles, the family’s cook, is a Sikh and worried about the violence on the streets against members of his religion. In The Burning Elephant, we step into Govinda’s Calcutta, a world which revolves around the magic and menace of Serpent Lane, just beyond the school gates, and spins out into a city and country in crisis, when the Prime Minister is assassinated. This is a story of how the terrors of life can crash into adolescence and how innocence, once lost, can never be regained.