Detailed descriptions of daily life in a Delhi literary enclave and the misfortunes of the novel’s long-suffering antihero make this a funny, entertaining and very moving read. It will appeals particularly to writers, as a portrait of a man in love with language.

A penurious college lecturer and part-time writer, Deven struggles to maintain a measure of respect from his wife and small son in on the outskirts of Delhi. He writes in his beloved Urdu mother-tongue but for practical reasons, given the lack of demand for Urdu, teaches Hindi Literature. When a wealthy childhood friend and editor of a literary magazine offers Deven the chance to interview and record one of India’s most revered Urdu poets, Nur, he accepts, despite the risk of both losing job and family.

Expenses spiral and problems multiply, not least those caused by the aging poet and his drunken entourage. As he reels in the heat between the chaotic magazine office and the poet’s rackety residence, beset by the incompetents and exploiters at every turn, Deven constantly questions his ability to complete his task, but never gives up:

‘He had accepted the gift of Nur’s poetry and that meant he was custodian of Nur’s very soul and spirit. It was a great distinction. He could not deny or abandon that under any pressure.’
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Passages of description, particularly night-time tranquillity contrasted with the heat and noise of the city by day, reflect the writer’s feel for landscape, sky and plant-life, mediated through Deven’s responses. Larger-than-life characters at the lower end of Delhi’s Bohemian social strata exasperate and entertain by turn, and include Nur’s two wives, one old and embittered, the other a seductive voluptuary jealous of her husband’s somewhat tarnished celebrity. Deven’s sleepy assistant and poor recording equipment seem always to be at their most unreliable just as the debauched poets sobers up enough to recite. With people demanding money at every turn, even the poet himself, in a series of preposterous begging letters, Deven’s occasional attempts to put his foot down only seem to make things worse.

Dialogue allied to description makes the characters and their concerns vividly present, as when Deven reproaches the crooked tape recorder salesman:

‘‘The equipment was bad,’ he shouted. ‘When I saw it that first time, I told you I didn’t want second-hand equipment, it is no good. The tapes were also rotten, cheap. You sent me a technician who knows nothing about recording. It is nothing to do with the performance – or the artiste. The artiste was the greatest- the best-‘his voice rose to a shriek and cracked. He was perspiring from every pore of his body, streaming with the salt fluid like someone mortally injured in a street accident.’

Remembered snatches of poetry which from time to time inform Deven’s thought processes forms another strand which enhance the book’s appeal. For instance, catching sight of a student in the crowd, Deven is reminded of his neglected professional duties:

‘In the moment that they stared at each other with mutual shock, a verse of Nur’s fell into Deven’s mind as casually as a discarded bus ticket:

Night ends, dawn breaks, and sorrow reappears,
Addressing us in the morning light with a cock’s shrill crow.’’

The mixing of lyrical and prosaic language, juxtaposing noble sentiment with raw reality and a seemingly effortless use of detail, plus strong rhythmic sentences, makes for very powerful writing in this story which has also been read as a metaphor for post-colonialism.

The book was short listed for the Booker Prize and made into a film of the same name.