Selection Day
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
From the Man Booker prize-winning author of The White Tiger
"The most exciting novelist writing in English today." A. N. Wilson
Manju is fourteen. He knows he is good at cricket - if not as good as his elder brother Radha. He knows that he hates his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented brother and is fascinated by CSI and curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know . . . Everyone around him, it seems, has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself.
But when Manju begins to get to know Radha's great rival, a boy as privileged and confident as Manju is not, everything in Manju'a world begins to change and he is faced by decisions that will challenge both his sense of self and of the world around him.
As sensitively observed as The White Tiger (Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008) was brilliantly furious, Selection Day reveals another facet of its author's remarkable talent.
PRAISE FOR ARAVIND ADIGA
"[In Selection Day he] has written another snarling, witty state-of-the-nation address about a country in thrall to values that 19th-century moralists would have damned as "not cricket"." Observer
"Dazzling" Independent
"Adiga is a real writer - that is to say, someone who forges an original voice and vision." Sunday Times
"Adiga enters the literary scene resplendent in battle dress and ready to conquer. Let us bow to him." Gary Shteyngart
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With his brilliant, raw energy ricocheting off of every line, Booker winner Adiga (White Tiger) turns his wry wit and his scrutiny to the youth leagues of cricket in Mumbai, following the successes and failures of teenage brothers Radha Krishna and Manjunath Kumar, who have been both formed and broken by their visionary but abusive father, Mohan. Brought to Mumbai as children after their mother left, the boys have grown up in a "one-room brick shed, divided by a green curtain." Ever since, they've spent every hour hoping and preparing for a different future, which they know depends on their ability to outshine all the other boys on the cricket field. To either help or hinder this process comes a cast of scouts, recruiters, and hangers-on, each of whom is etched with Adiga's trademark clarity they are as defined by their fate as they are resentful of it. "Revenge is the capitalism of the poor," he writes, describing Mohan's resolve to prove the potential of his sons, as well as their eventual attempts to escape him. But the claim also fuels the energy of the novel as a whole, unraveling the tremendous grit and fierce inner conflicts that come with the pursuit of revenge. Though Radha is known throughout Mumbai as the "best batsman" and Manju the "second best batsman," this is shockingly upturned, a move from which no one ever quite recovers. Meanwhile, as Manju in particular comes of age, he wrestles with what the sport demands and what he's willing to sacrifice in turn.
