The Story Of My Assassins

" THE STORY OF MY ASSASSINS " gives a vivid detail about the manners in which the corridors of power work in this country. choosing and using an individual for its own benefits and then crushing it with the very hands that nurtured it. the story is really what one would call hardhitting.AND sometimes it gets so horrendously depressing that you can almost hear yourself symphtasize with the characters . the strength of this book lies in the realistic narrative and the wonderfully built charactors. and you can not help the feeling that that one or the other character sounds similar to someone about whom you would have heard or read somewhere in the society. be it HATHORA THAGI, the protagnist or the other characters. this book my friends, is a "triumph of disparate voices,unbearable realities, and impossible conundrums, this is a book that would forever change the way we look at the world around us".

When I read 'The Valley Of Masks' I fell in love with Tejpal's prose and his profound narrative. That was a story based more in the realm of philosophy and abstractions, and I wondered why a 20 year veteran journo with Tehelka would write a story like that. I got my answer after reading The Story Of My Assassins.
Unlike the abstraction of 'The Valley...', 'Assassins' is more real, grittier, and retains Tejpal's profound yet stark and cynical commentary on social life and politics.

Based in the very real and very violent rural, rustic belt of north and central India, '...Assassins' is a deep, dark, gritty and compelling tale of people and situations that the Indian urban middle class has never come across. Caste politics, rape, murder, religious violence, banditry, and the murky waters of rural politics and its unholy matrimony with urban administration - that's the scenario of Tejpal's masterpiece.
The book, as the dust jacket aptly says, is brilliantly layered. There are stories withing a story, layered but colliding like concentric circles with a sense of poetic violence. These are worlds which have never interacted; we in our bubbled existence of nine-to-five jobs, friends, girl-friends, high buildings with fancy glass exteriors, and they in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, in the vast, desolate sugarcane fields, the urban underbelly of metropolitan railway stations...

This is the story of men - assassins, as the title says - who are not merely victim of their circumstances, but of a larger conspiracy set in place by an omnipresent body that has absolute control over even you and me. Of characters, or more so characterizations of very real people, now fossilized in fiction for you and me to read. Tejpal brilliantly deconstructs assumptions and ideologies that we have taken for granted for too long. And yet, laments the fact that enlightenment, however profound, is subsumed into the larger machinery of life. His language is rustic, and sophisticated, profane and profound at the same time. His characters are exaggerated, but real. His is narrative forceful and thought provoking.

'The Story Of My Assassins' is not a book about the future, nor is it entirely about the past. It is a commentary on the present, all our fallacies, our lies, our hypocrisy, and our idiosyncrasies. One may rebuke these elements citing their rawness, but that is precisely what the book is meant to do. It is about the stories we have never heard. And in all likelihood, we never will.

Really nice book... though it's essentially not the kind wherein you would be eager to check out the next page however no part of the book is boring...gives an interesting overview of rural india. the author quite easily manages to connect the lives of 4 individuals... a nice read

The concept is good... a story of your attackers. But the treatment is, frankly, not to my taste. The author has meandered all over the place, dwelling on everything in unbelievably full detail - including things that did not have any bearing on the story. You can safely skip entire chapters without missing the storyline! The use - the constant use of expletives and "gaalis" is irritating.

I could not finish the book. Stopped on page 153 - and I read those 153 pages in 1 hour flat between Chinchpokli and Kalyan! Pointless book - from my point of view. As far as I am concerend I wasted money.... Sorry Tarun, but I am not the target segment for this book...

I had seen this book on the shelves of bookshops many times, but had never bothered to pick it up. But then one day I did order it from flipkart. And I have no regrets. Its one of the very best, very well written. Nowhere in the story does one get bored, and nowhere does one feel that a part is out of context. A must read for all those who love fiction with a hint of reality... in fact not a hint... but a lot of reality.