The Peacock Throne

By Sujit Saraf

Book Overview

October 31, 1984 begins like any other day for Gopal Pandey as he sets up his tea stall in a lane off Chandni Chowk - the most magnificent and crowded street in all Delhi. At it's head lies Red Fort, once the home of the gem-encrusted Peacock Throne, symbol of the Mughal Empire's dazzling might, and of its downfall.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340899697
• ISBN13: 9780340899694
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Sceptre
• Length: 768 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 9.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Peacocks and lesser fowl

The title 'Peacock Throne' hints at cinematic royal melodrama, and what is printed on the cover of my paperback might make one expect a racy, fast-paced thriller. To be sure, there is no dearth of vile, greedy, scheming, devious and even murderous humanity, and castes, ethnicities and religions at regular intervals clash violently and disastrously, but on the whole this Asian vanity fair of middle and lower classes unfolds quite leisurely; and though there are several interlocking plot strands running through the book from the first to the last pages, there is no all-embracing arc of suspense. Add to this a fair amount of episodic material, and it becomes obvious that for some readers the journey through 750 densely printed pages might become somewhat exhausting. I myself was never in serious danger of giving up and often quite spellbound by the analytical, amused and at times downright cruel detachment of the narrator's voice; but I still wonder if the book's moral and emotional impact might have benefitted from a slightly firmer focus on guileless tea stall owner Gopal Pandey, buffeted by fate and other powers beyond his grasp and eventually dragged into a ludicrous political campaign.