Overview

Ram Mohan is an intrepid and ambitious young man in newly independent India, who refuses to be held down by his humble origins. Spurred on by his diehard optimism, he aims for things usually inaccessible to people of his extraction. However, he soon realizes that without political or bureaucratic power, the idea of a respectable life in India is nothing but pretence, and when Gulab Singh rescues him from being insulted by a thug, Ram Mohan becomes persuaded of the efficacy of violence in certain situations . . . Beginning at the peak of Nehruvian era and ending in the early seventies, The Politician is an enthralling, evocative view of provincial northern India-once the political heartland of the country-and the ebb and flow of the fortunes of its protagonists.

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9780143466154

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Every bit a twenty-first century Indian English novel, it neither tries to write back to a centre nor cares for a Western reader. The novel captures both the energy and the chaos that characterise life in small towns in Uttar Pradesh, showing effortlessly both the machinations of power politics and mounds of filth. (Scroll.in) There is hardly any political event of significance that has escaped Verma's attention. . . The gentle and effortless unravelling of these complex minds, and the timelessness of this tragic-comic novel by Verma, who won a Sahitya Award for a translated work in 2004, deserves praise. (Hindustan Times) The Politician seeks to create an informed understanding of the contemporary political landscape and also vividly narrates how emotional responses rooted in religious and cultural consciousness overwhelm concrete facts. The novel is a page-turner not for its political content but for creating a new humanised vision of political realism that warns us not to make politics a matter of emotional calling. Devesh Verma is clearly on the side of human solidarity. (Frontline)

"Every bit a twenty-first century Indian English novel, it neither tries to write back to a centre nor cares for a Western reader. The novel captures both the energy and the chaos that characterise life in small towns in Uttar Pradesh, showing effortlessly both the machinations of power politics and mounds of filth.-- ""Scroll.in"" There is hardly any political event of significance that has escaped Verma's attention. . . The gentle and effortless unravelling of these complex minds, and the timelessness of this tragic-comic novel by Verma, who won a Sahitya Award for a translated work in 2004, deserves praise.-- ""Hindustan Times"" The Politician seeks to create an informed understanding of the contemporary political landscape and also vividly narrates how emotional responses rooted in religious and cultural consciousness overwhelm concrete facts. The novel is a page-turner not for its political content but for creating a new humanised vision of political realism that warns us not to make politics a matter of emotional calling. Devesh Verma is clearly on the side of human solidarity.-- ""Frontline"""

Author Information

Devesh Verma was associated with TV journalism for over twenty-two years before he turned to fiction writing. In 2004, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award for his translation, from Urdu to Hindi, of Sakhtiyat, Pas-Sakhtiyat Aur Mashriqi Sheriyat, an important literary and cultural theory text. His first novel, The Politician, was published by Penguin Random House India in 2021.

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