INDRAJIT HAZRA ON BOOKS

I’m currently reading two books, both fiction. One is Nathanael West’s 1939 classic, The Day of the Locust’. The protagonist, Tod Hackett, goes into the dark, glitzy world of the Hollywood of the 1930s, as a set designer and enters a nightmare world. What is totally captivating about this slim novel is how it presents the viciousness of the world in a deadpan way. West himself was a Hollywood scriptwriter. But to see the beast with its belly up, and in a style that is almost noir but not quite, is delightful.

The second book, Ami ebong Amra (I and we) is also slim novel written by Humayan Ahmed, the Bangladeshi writer. This novel — from Ahmed’s Mishi Ali series — has Ali, a psychoanalyst who solves crime, trying to stop a man who tells him in the first chapter that he’s killed two people and will be killing another. Ahmed’s language is refreshingly understated. The scene in which Ali is sitting on a park bench, and encounters the killer for the first time, is brilliant. His response to the psychopath bragging about killing is: “You’ve killed two. You’ll kill a third. Go ahead. What do I have to say? It’s not as if you need my permission.” Psychological warfare between individuals doesn’t get better.

Hazra is the author of The Bioscope Man