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Amitav Ghosh Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery
Delhi, India South Asia Books 1996 8175300051 / 9788175300057 Second Impression Hardcover Very Good
8175300051 8175300051 VG/VG c. 1996, red bds. w/d.j., 256pp., (shelf wear, corners bumped, text clean, binding good, d.j.: lt.edge wear, rubbing). From Library Journal Ghosh's latest novel, after the accaimed The Shadow Lines (LJ 5/1/89), is part medical thriller, part science fiction, and part literary conspiracy novel, but entirely readable. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Kirkus Reviews New Yorker journalist and novelist Ghosh (The Shadow Lines, 1989, etc.) returns, this time with a confusing blur of science fiction, satire, epistemology, and ethnic alienation. When AVA/IIe, a nearly omniscient global computer system of the LifeWatch department in the densely bureaucratic International Water Council, discovers a fragment of an ID lost in the sea of information, Antar, a lonely, widower Egyptian who crunches numbers on the system in his drab Manhattan apartment, innocently directs the computer to reconstruct it, simultaneously activating hidden resources within the system while also jogging Antar's memory of the manic L. Murugan. Murugan (also known, with a cross-cultural wink, as Mr. Morgan) is a fastidious Indian and former LifeWatch employee whose obsession with malaria research compelled him to transfer to Calcutta in 1995, after which he abruptly vanished. As he did in The Shadow Lines, Ghosh jumbles chronology here, hopping restively from Murugan's feverishly surrealistic Calcutta to a chatty luncheon in which Murugan lectures interminably about malaria, then back to 1895, where Victorian scientists stumble on a Calcutta cabal in which individuals biologically transfer their personalities to achieve a kind of genetic reincarnation. At the heart of this dizzy mess is a comic examination of identity in an evolving multicultural milieu, but Ghosh's trademark touch for absurdist magical realism (The Circle of Reason) and ironic cultural clashes (the nonfiction In an Antique Land, 1993) renders the story this time both unreasonable and unbelievable. Densely intricate, logorrheic spoof of commercial suspense fiction from a skilled writer who should know better. (First printing of 40,000) -- Copyright 1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review ''A richly plotted literary thriller . . . Like Pynchon, Ghosh creates a world in which conspiracies, big conspiracies, lurk everywhere.'' -- -- Publishers Weekly ''Mesmerizing . . . begins by gently tapping into fears, then broadens into a mind-boggling conspiracy saga.'' -- -- The New York Times Book Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Product Description It begins in a near future New York City, when Antar, a low-level programmer and data analyst for a large bureaucratic concern, comes upon the lost and battered I.D. card of a man he once knew--a man who vanished without a trace some where in the teeming excess of Calcutta, India, several years before. Strangely compelled, Antar initiates a search into the facts behind the disappearance of the enigmatic L. Murugan, and is unwittingly drawn into a bizarre alternate history of medical science. Leaping backward in time, we join Murugan in Calcutta in 1995, as he follows the twisted threads of science, counter-science and ritual back a hundred years further to the laboratory of Ronald Ross, the British scientist who discovered how malaria is transmitted to humans. Obsessed with the weird, fortuitous coincidences that led to Ross' groundbreaking discovery, Murugan has stumbled upon evidence of an impossible ongoing experiment in controlled destiny, protected by a powerful unseen society that moves the world in secret and in silence. Suddenly, every fact hitherto known can no longer be trusted, for everything has been revealed to be other than it appears. In this steamy, overcrowded city of clashing cultures and hidden faces, L. Murugan has opened a Pandora's Box that carefully orchestrated death and misdirection have long kept shut. And the truth that is revealed will have momentous con sequences--for Murugan, for Antar, for a troubled female journalist and an exquisite Indian celebrity...for everyone and everything human. It begins in a near future New York City, when Antar, a low-level programmer and data analyst for a large bureaucratic concern, comes upon the lost and battered I.D. card of a man he once knew--a man who vanished without a trace some where in the teeming excess of Calcutta, India, several years before. Strangely compelled, Antar initiates a search into the facts behind the disappearance of the enigmatic L. Murugan, and is unwittingly drawn into a bizarre alternate history of medical science. Leaping backward in time, we join Murugan in Calcutta in 1995, as he follows the twisted threads of science, counter-science and ritual back a hundred years further to the laboratory of Ronald Ross, the British scientist who discovered how malaria is transmitted to humans. Obsessed with the weird, fortuitous coincidences that led to Ross' groundbreaking discovery, Murugan has stumbled upon evidence of an impossible ongoing experiment in controlled destiny, protected by a powerful unseen society that moves the world in secret and in silence
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