Sacred Games
Sacred Games ("Holy Games") is the original English title of a 2006 novel by the Indian author Vikram Chandra . The novel was published in German as a two-part series under the titles Der Gott von Bombay and Bombay Paradise and undivided under the title Der Godfather von Bombay . The novel is a thriller against the backdrop of the social and religious tensions in contemporary Bombay and Indian- Pakistani history. The work received critical acclaim and has been translated into several languages.
shape
The novel alternates between "Gaitonde chapters" in which the Mafia boss Gaitonde tells the story of his life in first person form and "Singh chapters" in which the investigations and experiences of police inspector Singh are told by a personal narrator . In addition, there are three digressions distributed throughout the book, which depict the history of the family of Sartaj Singh's mother, interwoven with the history of the partition of India in 1947 , and provide background reports on other people who appear in the novel. In mostly alternating chapters, Vikram Chandra tells the story of the rise and fall of the Indian Mafia boss ("Bhais") Ganesh Gaitonde and the investigations by police inspector Sartaj Singh about a bomb that may have been hidden in Bombay, which was related to the death of Ganesh Gaitonde seems to be standing.
content
Sartaj Singh, the only Sikh inspector in Bombay, receives an anonymous call that leads him to the hiding place of the notorious Mafia boss Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde tries to talk to Singh over an intercom, but he only listens to his stories until he can use an excavator to storm the heavily secured house of the gang boss, who then kills himself. The house turns out to be a nuclear-bombproof bunker and the suspicion arises that Gaitonde was aware of an impending nuclear attack in Bombay. Sartaj Singh starts the investigation. Inaudible to Sartaj Singh, Gaitonde evidently tells the story of his life after his own death while Singh was there.
Awards
- 2006 Vodafone Crossword Book Award
- 2006 Hutch Crossword Book Award in the "English Fiction" category
- 2007 Salon Book Award
- 2007 Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award
expenditure
In the English original
- 2006 as hardcover at Faber & Faber Limited in London
- in the same year as a paperback at Penguin Books
- 2007 hardcover by HarperCollins
- in the same year as a paperback edition again by Faber & Faber.
In German translation
- 2006 in a two-volume hardcover edition under the titles Der Gott von Bombay ( ISBN 978-3351030919 ) and Bombay Paradise ( ISBN 978-3351030926 ) by the Aufbau-Verlag - not intended by the author in the original
- 2008 under the title "The Godfather of Bombay" ( ISBN 978-3746624839 ) as paperback by the same publisher.
There were also issues u. a. in French, Spanish, Italian and Scandinavian and Slavic languages.