“The epic portrayal of the family in decay”
“Barbro Westling are reading an award-winning novel that evokes unease”
“yellow ochre and warm brilliant lies there, adorned with cloves, star anise, vaniljblomma and cinnamon. The book named Ghachar ghochar and writer Vivek Shanbhag. It is translated by Srinath Perur from the original language kannada, spoken in southern India.”
“An epic novel which, like His Earlier Midnattsbarnen and Arundhati Roy’s The god of small things, really succeed in capturing a family’s history. But it is done in just 120 pages! “
“Thus said Vivek Shanbhag is a master in the art of writing through the unspoken. The text seems written with a light hand, but the suggestive and imply making sense of unease only grows with the reader.”
“the extended family living first seemingly harmonious and very close together in one of Bangalores lower middle class areas. They eat sitting on the floor, and is disturbed only when the ants invade the home.”
“When the uncle in the family has a lot of commercial success with their idea in the kryddbranschen turned over the family’s fate in a kind. It will be Chikkappa, which alone supplies the rest and thus become the family’s boss.”
“They are moving to a home with large surfaces, which requires that they obtain furniture. They change themselves with the move. Still they stick together, but the family appears increasingly klaustrofobiskt. The sister who marries will again, the narrator’s own marriage is in crisis, there is nothing outside of the family. Well, possibly the age-old coffee house to which the narrator is ”without reason,” take refuge.”
“So what is there to say about me, only about me and not about the other? Wherever I start, I end eventually always of one of three women – amma, Malato or Anita – each one more horrific than the other,” notes the narrator, despairing. “
“The material prosperity has exposed a lived a hard-hearted and violent side of the family. Everything is tied together, nothing to change? ”Ghachar, ghochar” is Shanbhags nonsensspråk for a knot so intricate that it is not going to sort out. “
“this is a claustrophobic familjeskildring, not without a sense of humor, which probably also says something about the development in India today.”
“Trans. Peter Samuelsson”
