Vikas Swarup - Q & A: A Novel

Vikas Swarup is an Indian diplomat who has served in Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia and Great Britain. He is presently posted in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. Q & A is being translated into twenty-five languages and is due to be made into both a film and a stage musical. Vikas Swarup is writing a second novel.

Acclaim for Q & A:

'Not simply the story of a quiz, but rather a reminder of the various, often apparently random, ways in which knowledge can be acquired by the adventurous, the curious and the observant... Swarup is an accomplished storyteller, and Q & A has all the immediacy and impact of an oral account.'

Daily Mail

'An inspired idea... Through Ram's life story, Swarup is able to give us snapshots of Indian society... at its most lurid and extreme. If the prose style suggests social realism, the spirit of the novel is cinematic, even cartoon-like... A broad and sympathetic humanity underpins the whole book. Perhaps that is why, when it was finally time for Ram's good luck to hold, I was moved as well as relieved'

Sunday Telegraph

'India is equally chaotic, enchanting and corrupt in this spirited novel'

Sunday Times

'The premise of Vikas Swarup's picaresque debut is enticing... His vivid characterisation covers the full social spectrum (prostitutes, glue-sniffers, film stars, diplomats, slum-dwellers), and paints a colourful, generous and admirably unvarnished portrait of contemporary India, where not all the poor are angels, not all the wealthy are villains'

Literary Review

'Gloriously fantastical... the flashbacks he relates build into a picture of his life and of his remorselessly tough world: a mafia underworld that cripples children and trains them as beggars, arrogant whites oppressing their servants, families who prostitute a daughter, the dreary meanness of the rich, the desperate criminal measures to which poverty drives ordinary people'

The Times

'I can see it all on the big screen now'

Mariella Frostrup 'Open Book' Radio Four

'This page-turning novel reels from farce to melodrama to fairytale.'

You Magazine

www.booksattransworld.co.uk

'More than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. News like that could ruin your whole latte, but most of us are adept at ignoring such conditions... it takes more than a spoonful of sugar to get such medicine down, and Vikas Swarup provides a strange mixture of sweet and sour in this erratically comic novel... Through murders, robberies, rapes and close scrapes, Ram speaks in a voice that turns from wide-eyed innocence to moral outrage... but Ram never suggests the solution will come from a different political arrangement, more equitable distribution of wealth or social revolution. The real question is whether individuals will choose to treat one another more humanely, more selflessly. You can guess his final answer'

Washington Post

'Swarup... writes humorously and keeps surprises coming. When it is turned into the movie it wants to be, Q & A will be a delight'

New York Times Book Review

'A picaresque ride through the underbelly of urban India where evil hides in the most ordinary places... Despite an overdose of darkness, of the evil's endless trysts with a boy, the novel is for the most part stripped of overt sentimentality. It is the terseness of narrative that gives the book a contemporaneity. It is the tale of the new millennium's just-turned adults, the heirs to midnight's overgrown children' India Today

'Behind the gauze of playfulness and ironic description, the reader can't help but wonder whether Swarup is also trying to net a fish that's swimming at a deeper level of the water. For at its core, Thomas's story investigates the distinction made between knowledge and luck... a rollicking read as well as being a polished, varnished, finished work of impressive craftsmanship'

Hindustan Times

'Truly gripping... the character of the protagonist is an everyday person with an atypical take on life... it epitomizes all that life is for the common man in India, for whom even an honest victory is uncommon, almost met with ridicule and disbelief... Read it and treasure it'

Financial Express

'[For] galloping pace and sheer readability, you can't put this book down... Given the ingenious simplicity of the plot's framework at once a comment on how TV contests pander to audiences in the age of avarice... he is also pointing at obvious ethical dilemmas in a country where divisions of caste, class and, above all, the wide abyss between rich and poor, nags at any notion of equality, education and social justice'

Outlook

'An enthusiastic debut worth devouring. Vikas Swarup weaves a delightful yarn... the story stays with the reader for its remarkable and magical story of a young boy who believes that "a waking dream is always more fleeting than a sleeping one". So go ahead and read this enchanting tale of the good over the baneful'

Sunday Tribune

'A bloody good book. No two ways about it... The characters we encounter in the novel, be it the guileless Salim, the dutiful Lajwanti, or Nita, the whore pining for redemption, are all stereotypical and yet entirely believable. It is easy to feel for them. It is also easy to wish for a ride into the sunset with them... a roller coaster ride part quiz show, part morality tale'

Deccan Herald

'Riveting drama... Ram's life must pass through multiple filters, it must be told and retold in different ways. From the questions posed to him and the record provided on the DVD to his backgrounders for Smita, to the final tying up of all the loose ends, Ram is perhaps being put to a higher test. At the age of 18, his crowded life must be straightened out to disclose a compact honesty. For Swarup the quiz show is also a template to tell the story of modern India. It is a depiction with a moral edge'

Indian Express

'A polished debut... bang on the publisher's pulse. The linguistic style is simple, peppy and very Life of Pi. It is not often that we get such fast paced action, which, like a breathless express train, stops only at special stations, punch lines or when the quizmaster says, "You just won a 100 million rupees!"'

The Week

'Swarup has achieved a triumph with this thrilling, endearing work which gets into the heart and soul of modern India'

New Zealand Herald

'Just the book for a long journey. If you aren't going away somewhere, don't start if you intend to get any sleep at night'

SydneyMorning Herald

'Stunning first novel set in modern day India. A moving, dark comedy, that crosses social boundaries to paint a picture of India as we have never seen it before'

Manly Daily

'An intriguing story with a stinging touch of satire'

DailyTelegraph, Australia