Words on pages—centuries old technology—still have the power to reveal the world.
Until recently, I had never experienced New Delhi. I haven’t physically been there, but as of a few days ago, I feel like I have, or at least certain parts of it. If you haven’t yet been pulled by the new gravity of a certain book, be advised this sensation of geographic translocation may yet envelope you, too, presuming you pick up the literary thriller of the year. It’s called Age of Vice, written by Deepti Kapoor, and to crib a line that’s had its own pop culture play this past year, it’s everything, everywhere, all at once.
Tons of ink—which is to say, gazillions of pixels—have has been spilled about this book already. Reviews abound, most of them glitteringly positive, but some also with notes of prickly annoyance, sometimes even in the same review. I have to laugh at some of the smirky comments because in many cases the critiques strike me as subtle expressions of jealousy. Some reviewers can hardly contain the nervy breathlessness this razor blade of a novel provokes, while others sound practically chagrinned—even annoyed— to admit how much the story gripped them for almost five hundred pages.
Is this contemplative literature? Not exactly, but it’s also no pulpy mass market paperback rushed through a word processor. It crackles with characters and carefully constructed set pieces. It limns compelling considerations of class and circumstance, including smart refractions of the surprisingly narrow lines that often demarcate different worlds. It takes place amid both opulence and squalor in ways that make your bones feel the thrumming intensity of New Delhi’s frenzied churn. It juxtaposes grotesque decadence against depraved poverty in ways that force constant ethical self re-examinations for the reader. It’s awash in hepatically paralyzing quantities of alcohol, dressed in curling plumes of cigarette smoke, jangled by chaotic traffic, jacked up by high crime. It reads like a camera-ready treatment slated for a big budget—so much so that it’s already been optioned for a big budget TV series.
Of course, you know this already: novels are not movies, and I sincerely believe they shouldn’t be read as analogues of each other. Novels and movies are simply different creative creatures. Even if characters and events effectively appear in both written and cinematic presentations of the same story, books and movies will often present profoundly different experiences for readers and viewers. Creative works don’t automatically transfer from one format to another. Led Zeppelin did not write for orchestras, and showy attempts to velcro them together are not automatically successful. Nonetheless, that doesn’t stop TV and movie producers from trying their best to lock rights to new, juicy novels. The fact that this book reads like a movie places is it squarely in contemporary culture, considering how screens have become the dominant conduit for all means of communication. Book readers—and we must presume that there are at least a few of us left!— cannot help but be aware that screen-worthiness is part of the appeal. But the fact that it reads so well as a book means that it is also proudly declares itself as a novel first and last, which ironically solidifies one of its great pleasures. It lives through words on its pages, and this book comes alive in ways familiar to the sensations you get when your exercised heart pounds in your chest.
Kapoor can write like a dream. She captures mise-en-scène in just a few words, and she can uncork sizzling action at both large and small scales with gusto and precision. Her dialogue resonates with authenticity, amplified by her astute inclusion use of words imported from multiple languages without pretension. Her characters present inner motivations that believably collide with external forces imposed upon them.
What captures my attention is how much this book has mesmerized a massive international audience. Even in an age where shared cultural experiences have become rare, Age of Vice reinforces just how hungry we all are for stories about lives we may not fully understand. The book’s seemingly on-the-nose title in fact cleverly comes from an astute and relevant passage in The Mahabharata. The novel presents a modern Indian cultural masala in a way that not only speaks to wide audiences, but also resonates truthfully even for those of us who have never spent time in murderous Indian prisons, remote Himalayan tea houses, or decaying urban shantytowns.
A former journalist, Deepti Kapoor has presented an India that simultaneously revolts and captivates, clearly drawing on her own tangental experiences as well as her capacious imagination. One cannot write something that is entirely unknown. Kapoor’s powers of observation as a reporter, as a private school student, and as a Delhi denizen living amid the noise and color and hum seem to expurgate her personal experiences pressed up against the relentless grime even as she showcases that squalor in glittering prose.
Sure, I plan to tune in when it hits the screen. I also plan to read what she’s promised will be two literary sequels. But right now my hands are vibrating. I just closed the last page of Kapoor’s clever, edgy, well-calculated tale, and one of my most deeply held beliefs about creative acts rings loudly in my ears. Fiction is often the best reporter of facts, functioning as a synthesis of cultural forces and phenomena that ordinary reporting and town square recitations are usually slow to assimilate. In Age of Vice, I feel as if I’ve just read a distillation of authentic forces in the everyday world, even though my own personal experiences have never seen or felt anything like what happens inside its pages.