Product Description

Set in contemporary India, this work includes five tales which paint a picture of Bombay - its ghosts, its passions, its feuds, its mysteries - while exploring questions of the human spirit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56992 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

A book that has so much to say
Please ignore the person who labelled this novel as 'dire and dissapointing'. To say that the stories lacked purpose is to misunderstand the layers that the series of stories represents. I was introduced to this novel during my english degree, on a module examining Indian writing this was the novel that really struck me. The examination of the encounter between modernity and tradition in Bombay creates a haunting underworld in the novel, a semi-mythological Indian past that lurks within the shadows, and haunts the disembodied old houses that are trapped between scaling apartment blocks. It is a brilliantly haunting novel - in particular the story of Sartaj the detective who is trapped between the underworld and the real world, ending up isolated from both. Read it, you will not be dissapointed.

I loved this book and have re-read it several times!
The stories in this collection are very different, each totally absorbing in its own way. I've been to Bombay a few times and this book took me back there. The love and longing expressed in the stories about Sartaj the policeman and Iqbal the programmer still haunt me. After reading the comments from Glasgow I'll have to give 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain' another try - if, like me, you couldn't get into it don't let it put you off 'Love and Longing...'

Dire and disappointing
This collection of short stories is really dire, and a real disappointment from an author who charmed me with his "Red Earth and Pouring Rain". Many of the tales do not really have a point. This would not matter if there was more of a sense of place - after all this book is called love and longing in BOMBAY. Many of the stories were self-indulgent, many self-conscious and frankly not one of these stories measures upto this author's previous work.