There's a literary tradition of creating a series of stories tied together by location. Through a series of vignettes featuring the lives of a variety of individuals in a community the author attempts to give readers an impression of life in the locale. The most famous of these collections are Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and James Joyce's Dubliners. Although from different worlds and stylistically miles apart, both men brought their chosen cities to life in ways that left indelible impressions upon the reader. 

In Between the Assassinations, Aravind Adiga tries his hand at the genre setting his stories in the city of Kittur on the southwest coast of India. The titular assassinations refer to the 1984 death of Indira Gandhi and the killing of her son Rajiv seven years later in 1991. While neither event has any direct bearing on the course of action in this book, they were important events in the history of India. Sandwiched between the two, the "life as normal" scenes depicted by Adiga are a history you don't normally read in text books.  

Adiga frames the book as a tourist guide to the region. He explains that in order to properly "do" Kittur you need seven days and the book is divided into seven sections. While some areas of the city might take a full day to explore, others take only part of a day, thus some chapters cover a full day and others only a morning or an afternoon. The guidebook descriptions for each chapter are rather tongue-in-cheek with landmarks including a pornographic movie theatre, an unfinished cathedral, an historic monument fallen into disrepair, and violent slums. Kittur is best known for being located halfway between a couple of other places and having a very high population of lower caste Hoyka people. Within the total population of Kittur, only eighty-nine people self identify as being without religion or caste. 

It shouldn't be of much surprise that caste, class, and religion play a role in the majority of the stories. Everything that occurs in the city exists under these shadows and they're a constant presence in the backs of people's minds. In Kittur your place is very closely defined and even thinking about crossing the line could result in disaster. It's all right for a servant to make himself indispensable, but to try and be treated as an equal and see what happens. 

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the recently published What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and online all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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