- Mass Market Paperback: 1 pages
- Publisher: Penguin UK; New edition edition (Jun 3 1988)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0140108688
- ISBN-13: 978-0140108682
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“A remarkable piece of work... A magnificent novel.” – Salman Rushdie, Observer
“A major attempt to tackle serious themes... extraordinarily rich in incident and detail.” – Sebastian Faulks
“Anita Desai’s most subtle and mature work to date... She retains an unforced and powerful ease in conveying the colour and sounds and sensations of Indian life.” – TLS --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
“A major attempt to tackle serious themes... extraordinarily rich in incident and detail.” – Sebastian Faulks
“Anita Desai’s most subtle and mature work to date... She retains an unforced and powerful ease in conveying the colour and sounds and sensations of Indian life.” – TLS --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Book Description
Asked to interview India's greatest poet, Deven sees a way to escape the miseries of life as a small-town scholar. But the old man he finds deep in the bazaars of Old Delhi bears no resemblance to the idol of his youth. Deven is fooled, bullied and cheated, and drawn into a new captivity. From the author of CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Baffling and pointless,
By
This review is from: In Custody Tie In (Mass Market Paperback)
IN CUSTODY was the December selection of my book club, and when we met none of us knew why we had spent the time on this novel. The novel tells the pointless story of Deven, an Indian college instructor, who has the opportunity to interview the great Urdu poet Nur. His efforts to interview Nur are ultimately -- after many misadventures that may be supposed to be funny --fruitless. Nur himself turns out to be a broken, querulous old man, and Deven is the same whining weakling at the end of the book that he was in the beginning. The characters are completely unsympathetic; the prose is dry and occasionally deliberately obscure. All our book club could find to discuss was how in the world this book got shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and how in the world anyone could make a movie of it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good depiction of real life,
By A Customer
This review is from: In Custody Tie In (Mass Market Paperback)
It's been a while since I've read it, but am inspired to write about it since this book is far superior to the one I'm reading now by the same author (Journey to Ithaca). I loved this book. I feel that Desai truly captured the feeling of a bygone time (which was bygone already in the story). The frustration the poor lecturer felt at his failed attempts to record the great Urdu Ghazal master, which led to one disaster after another...poor loser, is felt by the reader. If you've ever been to India, you can just imagine the setting, the streets, the buildings, the city where the lecturer goes to make his recordings. The underhandedness of the Master's mistress, and the drunken stupidity of the "chumchas" is so typical, as is the nagging wife of the lecturer who just doesn't understand his artistic pursuits. Desai gave this book a wonderful ending too. Despite all that went wrong, the Master still saw through his drunken haze the sincerity of the lecturer and left him "In Custody," of his compositions. A masterful, bitter sweet ending.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Desai's In Custody is tedious,
By A Customer
This review is from: In Custody Tie In (Mass Market Paperback)
Although Desai's In Custody is well written and intelligent, it is tedious and dull. The many important images (ie: the role of women, and the dead language- Urdu) presented in the novel are hard to find. The book is time consuming and boring.
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