The Sly Company of People Who Care

The narrator of this debut, an Indian national, is a 22-year-old cricket reporter who has left Bombay to explore Guyana's exotic landscape and people ("Guyana was elemental, water and earth, mud and fruit, race and crime, innocent and full of scoundrels"), many of whom he befriends. In vigorous yet lyrical prose employing a pungent vernacular, Bhattacharya describes Guyana's horrid heat and thunderous rain in sensuous detail: the pretentious, decaying buildings of its capital, the unbearable humidity that settles on the men who go "porknocking," or searching for diamonds in the muddy soil. Violence breaks out easily during nights of drinking, yet people care about strangers. The narrator falls for a seductive young woman, but their first trip together—to Venezuela—veers from romance to threat when he re-enters Guyana without papers. In fact, a dark undercurrent of dread haunts the novel, and what begins as a desultory adventure story delivers the shock of multiple betrayals. Bhattacharya's distinctive voice, which incorporates both Guyanese and Indian dialects, results in an authentic and sybaritic tale. (May)