The narrator, an unnamed young man in Bangalore, spends his afternoons at a coffee house watching the world and taking advice from a waiter named Vincent. He lives with his parents, his sister Malati and his uncle Chikkappa, whose spice trading business lifted the family from a cramped, ant-infested rented house into a bigger home and an easy life.
The narrator nominally works for the business but does nothing; the family depends on Chikkappa and protects him fiercely. When the narrator marries Anita, a woman with firm principles who refuses to accept how things are done, her presence exposes the family's moral compromises and the quiet menace that holds it together.
Vivek Shanbhag's novella, originally written in Kannada and translated into English by Srinath Perur, is short, wry and precise, with tension built from small domestic details. It drew international praise when it appeared in the UK and US in 2017, and its title is a made-up phrase for something hopelessly entangled.
Book details
| Author | Vivek Shanbhag |
|---|---|
| First published | 2013 |
| Original language | Kannada |
| Translated by | Srinath Perur |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 118 |
| Setting | Bangalore, early 21st century |
Themes
- Money and morality
- Family loyalty
- Class mobility
- Complicity
- Marriage
Who should read it
Readers who like short, unsettling literary fiction about how money reshapes a family.