Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

Seven years in the making, Sacred Games is an epic of exceptional richness and power. Vikram Chandra’s novel draws the reader deep into the life of detective Sartaj Singh - and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.

Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs in the Mumbai police force, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But ‘the silky Sikh’ is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip-off as to the secret hideout of the legendary boss of the G-company, he’s determined that he’ll be the one to collect the prize

Vikram Chandra’s keenly anticipated new novel is a magnificent story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side. Drawing inspiration from the best of Victorian fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra’s own life and research on the streets of Mumbai, Sacred Games reads like a potboiling page-turner but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.

(From Publisher)

Vikram Chandra was born in New Delhi. His first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize. His collection of short stories, Love and Longing in Bombay (1997) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has co-written Mission Kashmir, an Indian feature film. Vikram Chandra currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, where he lives with his wife Melanie and teaches at the University of California. His work has been translated into eleven languages.