Vanquisher, a sweeping novel set in southern India between the 1930’s and 60’s takes the reader into the pulsating world of Swami, the second-born son of a proud but impoverished family. In this world, the weak, namely Swami’s entire family, depends on the strong, namely Swami. It is from this world that Swami dreams of escaping someday to go to America.
However that is easier said than done, for a high price has been extracted in the past for being ambitious from Swami’s mother Rajee. But these ambitions she has failed to achieve. Rajee will thus do all she can to keep Swami exactly where she wants him—by her side, where his hard work and success will eventually bring good fortune to the family. He must be the savior who finds ways to deal not only with the family’s poverty but also with its tangled relationships and troubled members. Swami’s biggest anxiety is his mentally ill and closet homosexual older brother Gopal who may well be responsible for shaking the family’s very foundations and destroying its fragile but very important Brahmin sense of respectability. The one glimmer of hope Swami has is his younger brother Cheenu who Swami fervently trusts will one day start sharing his burden.
But sacrifices more horrifying than anyone could ever imagine will be needed in order for the family to retain its honor and for Swami to finally break free of his chains. And yet, in the end Swami isn’t sure he can truly shed those chains when he sees that they are in reality the bonds of his love and single-minded commitment to his family.
‘The Vanquisher of Obstacles’ takes Pulitzer Prize winning Frank McCourt’s Angela's Ashes to India, blends it with raw emotional appeal and spices it up with the angst of stifling Indian family obligations. The novel is sure to appeal to readers for its lavishly vivid and pungent settings in Bombay, pre-Independence Tamil Nadu, Tashkent and Rangoon. Within these settings, the book takes an unflinching look into a decidedly south Indian and yet universally understood vibrant family with its exasperating, often funny, and tragic ups and downs.
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