Rating: 
Summary: advance praise for AN OBEDIENT FATHER
Review: "A subtly rendered, marvelously detailed tragicomedy of contemporary India by an enormously gifted young writer." --Joyce Carol Oates"An original voice imbues this dark tale with delicious irony. Charged with life, the passionate characters in AN OBEDIENT FATHER continue to haunt the reader long after the book ends. Akhil Sharma's writing has astonishing range and power." --Bapsi Sidhwa "An Indian family novel that will appeal to anyone with a taste for red-blooded American realism and farce. [Sharma's] narrator, Ram Karan, a corrupt inspector for the Delhi public school system, is a self-pitying moral sloth whom Mark Twain would have recognized in a Missouri minute." --R. Z. Sheppard, TIME
Rating: 
Summary: Universal themes
Review: A spectacular work. An incredible character study. Hard to read. Hard to put down. It is not about India. It is not about incest. India and incest are but metaphors. The theme is universal: corruption, betrayal, guilt, and revenge. It is not about love, remorse, or forgiveness. Rather, it is about the inability to love, the inability to feel remorse, and the inability to forgive. As I said, a hard read. By telling this tale from the father's perspective, Sharma makes him hard to dismiss. Everday evil is mundane, private, familar. It is committed by people we recognize, people who are petty, weak, and self-absorbed. It is as basic as the blow of a rock and as ugly as incest. It is committed by people who should know better. It is committed by people who are not that different than we are. It destroys everyone involved. Again, this is a spectacular book.
Rating:
Summary: More praise for Akhil Sharma's AN OBEDIENT FATHER
Review: A supernova in the galaxy of young, talented Indian writers, Sharma debuts with a bold and shocking novel that casts a mesmerizing spell. Ram Karan is a widower whose widowed daughter Anita, and eight-year-old granddaughter, Asha, live with him in a tiny apartment in one of Delhi's poorer sections. Nominally a functionary in the physical education department of the city's schools, Ram is in fact "Mr. Gupta's moneyman"; that is, he coerces bribes for his boss, who funnels the money to the Congress Party. At first, Ram's candid admissions of "general incompetence and laziness" are perversely endearing, but when the real cause of his self-hatred comes to light, the reader's perceptions begin to change. In a moment of temptation, Ram commits a furtive sexual act with his unwitting granddaughter-and his downfall begins. Twenty years ago, he had repeatedly raped Anita, who now becomes unhinged at the thought that her daughter may be in peril. Anita's bizarre revenge will result in Ram's complete degradation; ironically, the repercussions of her obsessive need for disclosure cause even more emotional damage to everyone involved. Concurrent with these personal tragedies and the breakdown of one family, Sharma draws an acid-etched picture of modern Indian society, in which the corrupt political system victimizes all citizens. When Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated during the 1991 parliamentary elections, Mr. Gupta switches his allegiance to the rival BJP party, commencing a dangerous political game that embroils Ram. Sharma's depiction of a society riddled with graft, violent religious prejudice, male chauvinism and bigoted cultural attitudes is a cautionary tale about what happens to the individual spirit when poverty, superstition, racial tension and general hopelessness are exacerbated by the absence of judicial morality. This caustic yet darkly comic story resonates powerfully, as the reader comes to sympathize with fallible human beings trapped in circumstances that corrupt the soul. -PW (starred review) The story is almost Aeschylean in the tumult of its misery-deaths, heart attacks, widowings, suicides, even murder-yet the plain, unstoried quality of life itself is never neglected by Sharma. The daily life of poverty-stricken Delhi is ever made real, and even the ruinously monstrous Karan-narrator of much of the book-consistently makes evident his intelligence, depth, and sensitivity as one who's light-years away from any sort of cardboard villain. . . pathetic, remorseless, and wrenching. -Kirkus
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty bad
Review: Although Akhil Sharma is not totally devoid of talent, this book simply is a failure. There are no sympathetic characters, the situations are contrived. Maybe Mr Sharma will hit upon a more believable story in his next book.
Rating:
Summary: A brave and disturbing novel
Review: An extraordinary story of moral, physical and political corruption. The protagonist is in almost all ways despicable and weak, yet at times I found myself sympathising with him, and I was always riveted by his unhappy predicament. This is a horrifying and fascinating story, and, unlike one of your other reviewers, at no point did I feel the author was muckraking unfairly. He has written a brave and intelligent book.
Rating:
Summary: major disappointment
Review: Avoid this book, unless you want to get bored, ragged or irritated. This is plain pretense to provbe to the critics that this is a serious novel about today's issues. The characters are pretty cardboard, the situations unbelievable and the writing style--zilch. I don't know how the book got past the editing staff of publishers. Now was India in turmoil after Rajiv Gandhi's death or after Indira gandhi's death. Sharma is not sure. Well that is his level of knowledge of affairs in India. Maybe he should write something which is more believable next time....
Rating:
Summary: Child molestation and incest occur in India also
Review: Child molestation and incest occur in India in the same way that they occur in all societies. In today's edition of The Statesman (Tuesday December 20th, 2004: New Delhi edition) on page 3 Section 1 there is an article with the headline RAPED BY FATHER, TEENAGER ELOPES. The first line from this article is, "A 15-year-old girl who reportedly eloped with her friend has alleged that she was raped by her father and brother." Also in today's Statesman (Section 2 page 4: bottom left corner) is a small article about a man getting life in jail for raping his daughter. His crime was discovered when she became pregnant. Sexual violence against women is such a problem that, in some Indian states, male policemen cannot arrest a woman between sunset and sunrise; they must call for a female policewoman if they want the criminal arrested. The people who deny that child molestation and incest occur in India seem, to me, motivated either by misogyny or misguided patriotism (the same idiocy that has people in India saying that AIDS is a western disease or that it does not even exist in India). Futher examples of sexual violence against women in India include (again in today's Statesman) GOVT TO DEREGISTER HOSPITAL WHERE NURSE WAS RAPED. This article (on page 3, Section 1) tells of an 18-year-old woman beaten so severely during her rape that she lost sight in one eye. The hospital tried to cover up the event. Also in today's Statesman (this time page 6) 6 POLICEMEN SUSPENDED IN GANG RAPE CASE. It is important to remember that saying that sexual crimes do not occur in India makes it harder for victims to step forward and seek help.
Rating:
Summary: poor storytelling
Review: Do not get mislead by this book. This is just atrociously bad storytelling; poor fiction disguised as depiction of reality. As an Indian who has travelled a bit around the country and the globe, I can make make out that Akhil Sharma's game is to become a part of the big Indian wirters making waves these days. But since his talenbt is so limited, he ends up serving very flat,boring fare, designed to shock you, but only managing to irritate in the end. First of all the character. All plastic and unhappy. The lead characters are so mean and negative, one wonders why the book has been written. The story line is a yawn. The pretense of greater literary merit is a laugh. I give it zero star rating. Just run away from this sad, bad book...
Rating:
Summary: A Novel About Corruption, Moral and Political
Review: Don't enter into Akhil Sharma's AN OBEDIENT FATHER expecting the romantic exoticism of many of today's Indian writers. His India is not mystical or lush or dream-like but instead peels away exterior layers to show what lies beneath. This is a story of corruption, both moral and political. Ram Karan is a self-pitying hedonist, and he knows it, even hates himself for it. Others think even less of him. When his daughter confronts him with their shared secret he hopes she had forgotten, two days after the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi, both Karan and India face an uncertain future. To Sharma's credit, he allows the reader deep enough into Karan's psyche to elevate him from despicable to pathetic, and yes, you do start to feel for this man, however guiltily. Sharma's greatest strength here is his characterizations, from Karan to Anita to the corrupt bureaucrats who work with Karan to his extended family. If you are just now sampling the range of Indian fiction available in the United States, this is a good place to start. If you are familiar with the wider range of voices, Akhil Sharma's adds a nice balance to the rest, perhaps more American than most but still in his heart Indian.
Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: great writing - except for a few overzealous metaphors, the prose style is inspiring. this matters. great characters - sharma opens them up - and great plot. I checked this book out of the library, but it merits a personal copy, so I'm buying it. I allow myself to own very few books, but this is one I'll read again.
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