Raj Kamal Jha

Raj Kamal Jha's novel is set in New Delhi, and intertwines three stories set in that city: a woman talking to her sleeping child about their shared past, a man contemplating murder, and a baby abandoned at an orphanage.

Jha seeks to blend his realist narrative with fantasy elements, especially in the baby's story. This is clunky at times, and I don't think it really works.

For more than half of this novel, I found it confusing and hard to follow. It took me a long time to find its rhythm and get into it. By the end I found it quite satisfying, but I would have rated it higher were the journey a bit less confusing.… (mais)

In India, in 2002, in response to a deadly incident in which Hindus riding in a train were killed when the train was set on fire by a group of Muslims, anti-Muslim violence raged in the city of Ahmedabad for days, with fire and house burning the most common tactics. In the end, over a thousand people died in the city, with close to 800 being Muslim.

Fireproof is a fictional, phantasmagorical account of this horrific episode. The protagonist and first-person narrator, Mr. Jay, has other things on his mind beside the fact that "the city is on fire" (an oft-repeated mantra throughout the novel). His wife has just given birth, prematurely and with great difficulty. The doctors have her sedated into unconsciousness, where she is scheduled to remain for two or three days. His son has been born deformed, with no arms, legs or ears and just a slit for a mouth, but improbably, with perfectly formed eyes. Even more improbably, because of the burn victims streaming into the hospital, Jay is given this newborn to take home with him for the night.

And while in the hospital, Jay looks up at a high window to see a face and the words, "Help me" written on the window pane. Jay's attempt to respond to this plea sets him upon a journey, ever more confusing, unreal and otherworldly.

The violence going on around Jay is brought to the forefront frequently, as individual acts of terrifying violence and cruelty are portrayed in detail, but always through a mist of unreality and confusion.

This is a strong but flawed book. There is much power in it, and much to like about its take on the darker side of human nature and the consequences of mindless hate, but the magical realism aspects at its core fray out of control, especially later in the narrative. Many people would like and admire Fireproof. I guess I would say that I do, too. So I'm at an odd place. I want other people to read it, but I don't feel comfortable recommending it to them.… (mais)