7.9 /10 2 Votes
Country India/USA Publication date 2007 Pages 928pp Originally published 2006 Publisher HarperCollins OCLC 74556544 | 3.9/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Hardcover) ISBN 0-06-113035-4 Genre Novel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nominations National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Similar Vikram Chandra books, India books, Novels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sacred Games is a book by Vikram Chandra published in 2006. Upon release, it received critical acclaim and subsequently won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award.
Contents
Plot summary
Sacred Games combines the ambition of a 19th-century social novel with a cops-and-Bhais detective thriller. (Bhai is a Mumbai(Bombay) slang term for gangster.)
As sprawling as the heat-drenched city it richly portrays, Sacred Games delves into many emotionally charged worlds of contemporary India, in particular the spidery links between organized crime, local politics and Indian espionage that lie below the shimmering surfaces of its economic renaissance. Money and corruption form the golden thread. In interweaving narratives and voices, Sacred Games takes on even larger themes, from the wrenching violence of the 1947 partition of India to the specter of nuclear terrorism.
Publication history
The book earned Chandra a million dollar advance from HarperCollins. The initial print run was 200,000 copies. However, sales were disappointing and it is estimated that the advance lost $655,750. It was critically praised, winning the 2006 Vodafone Crossword Book Award.
Series adaptation
Netflix announced the production of an original series based on the novel in partnership with Phantom Films on June 6, 2016. The Hindi-English series will be shot on location India and released worldwide on Netflix upon completion.