Ghachar Ghochar

About this item

"Vivek Shanbhag is an Indian Chekhov." —Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City For readers of Akhil Sharma, Mohsin Hamid, and Teju Cole, a haunting novel about an upwardly mobile family splintered by success in rapidly changing India In this masterful novel by the acclaimed Indian writer Vivek Shanbhag, a close-knit family is delivered from near-destitution to sudden wealth after the narrator's uncle founds a successful spice company. As the narrator—a sensitive young man who is never named—his sister, his parents, and his uncle move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house and begin to grow accustomed to their newfound wealth, the family dynamics begin to shift. Allegiances and desires realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things begin to become "ghachar ghochar"—a nonsense phrase that, to the narrator, comes to mean something entangled