Beggar’s Bedlam

This uproarious novel from Bhattacharya (1948–2014), originally published in 2003, exemplifies the author’s penchant for freewheeling magical realism and rollicking revolutionary narratives. The action takes place in 1999 Kolkata, where three severed heads are discovered on the shores of a river, prompting the police to write them off as tidal refuse from a cremation site or a garbage dump. The scene turns out to be a prelude for an uprising against the local communist government led by Bhodi, a member of the Choktar black magic sect, who joins forces with three mischievous Fyatarus, flying creatures who ransack people’s homes. Over the course of their campaign against “governmental assbuggery,” they wreak pandemonium to deliriously comic effect. In one of many madcap episodes of Pynchonesque action, the Fyatarus salvage a cannon once used by Portuguese pirates, then fire it against their enemies. The sprawling cast includes the ghost of Josef Stalin, a communist official who dreams about visiting North Korea, a talking raven, and a police commissioner who’s beheaded by a flying saucer controlled by Bhodi and his crew. Bhattacharya smoothly shifts between high and low registers, zagging from erudite references to Kolkata’s political history and its poets to the Fyatarus’ scatological barbs (everyone they encounter is an “asswipe” or a “pube”), and he makes every sentence fizz with the spirit of insurrection. It’s an absolute blast. (July)