Between the Assassinations

A Novel in Stories

By: Aravind Adiga

Narrated by: Harsh Nayyar

From the New York Times-bestselling winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008 -- a powerful and striking new collection

Welcome to Kittur, India. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.

A twelve-year-old boy named Ziauddin, a gofer at a tea shop near the railway station, is enticed into wrongdoing because a fair-skinned stranger treats him with dignity and warmth. George D'Souza, a mosquito-repellent sprayer, elevates himself to gardener and then chauffeur to the lovely, young Mrs. Gomes, and then loses it all when he attempts to be something more. A little girl's first act of love for her father is to beg on the street for money to support his drug habit. A privileged schoolboy sets off an explosive in a Jesuit-school classroom in protest against casteism. And the loneliest member of the Marxist-Maoist Party of India falls in love with the one young woman, in the poorest part of town, whom he cannot afford to wed.

A blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, Between the Assassinations, with all the humor, sympathy, and unflinching candor of The White Tiger, showcases the most beloved aspects of Aravind Adiga's writing to brilliant effect and enlarges our understanding of the world we live in today.©2009 Aravind Adiga; (P)2009 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

"Between the Assassinations shows that Adiga...is one of the most important voices to emerge from India in recent years." -- The Guardian (London)

Fine Short Stories

This is a collection of short stories, not a novel with a single story line. Some of the negative reviewers seem unable to get over that point. Despite no plot line, the stories are linked together by place -- all are set in the fictional southwestern Indian town of Kittur. In this sense it's not unlike Dubliners or Winesburg, Ohio.

Aravind Adiga does an excellent job of creating believable and endearing, though not necessarily likeable, characters that represent a cross section of Indian society.

My only complaint is that it is unrelentingly grim, which again reminded me of Winesburg, Ohio. Nevertheless, I recommend it, especially to anyone interested in modern India.

Enough with the Indian Poor Already

This an aggregation of short stories about individuals struggling to survive in the Indian caste system. Mildly interesting but after "White Tiger" and "Sliumdog..." I have pretty much had it with descriptions of the underbelly of India. There are parts that are very funny; mostly because of the cursing and berating one another, but it is a generally depressing read. The reader becomes wearing and annoying too. Maybe that's the message but it's not a page turner. I bought it because of the $9.95 Audible promotion. I don't recommend it as either entertainment or information.

India Revealed

The stories in this book appear to be well-writtten, realistic visions of the problems faced by lower caste people in India. While the images are convincing, the stories are uniformly morbid and difficult. Men and women alike are frustrated, sometimes corrupt, always in trouble. It is not a pleasure to listen to.

Boring & Disjointed

I downloaded this book since I enjoyed the authors previous book,White Tiger. This book is nothing like the first one. Extremely boring vingettes that take place in an obscure Indian village. A real torture to finish it.

Great Listen, wonderful narrator!

Enjoyed these thoughtful stories very much, and particularly liked having a narrator with an appropriate accent, very clear to understand and hear, and read extremely well. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in compelling stories.