Bunker 13 - Softcover

Bahal, Aniruddha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571217419 ISBN 13: 9780571217410

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2003

Synopsis

Guns, drugs, sex and espionage in Kashmir: a novel that does for this generation what Catch 22 and Trainspotting did for theirs. Minty Mehta (a.k.a. MM) likes to play dangerously. When shooting a documentary in Kashmir about the Indian army and their conflict with the Pakistanis, he likes to indulge in a spot of parachute-jumping with Major Rodrigues, doubling the thrill with a snort of amphetamine or Lady -H on the way down. Even when a Sikh officer dies on a jump it doesn't deter them from their headlong pursuit of hedonism; but it soon becomes clear MM doesn't really trust Rodrigues, for reasons that will become apparent after a raid on a village which offers shelter to the Muslims. At Bunker 13 a massacre of civilians occurs along with the quarry but what lands in the Indian officers' possession is some very re-saleable military hardware and 100kg of the finest grade heroin you can find.

About this title

Review:

Not so much a thriller as a scathing satire, Bunker 13 is nonetheless full of all the familiar elements of the modern thriller: spies, action and debauchery. Investigative journalist Bahal is an expert on the corruption endemic in Indian public life and his first novel is sardonic in its portrayal of a world in which everything is for sale, all the time. MM, his alter ego and protagonist, peels off layer after layer from the world in which he moves and from his own identity; just as we think MM can not get any more double-dealing and mercenary, he always manages to sink to yet another depth. Along the way, we find out about sexual shenanigans at a military academy, the inventive revenges of the Russian mafia, the particular pleasures of hard-drug abuse during paratroop drops and the going rate for souls, heavy armaments and flayings. Bunker 13 is the site of a particularly vicious massacre in the course of the Kashmir conflict, but this is not the heart of MM's darkness, merely one step in his journey--this is one of the most abrasively upsetting books you will read this year. The other thing that has to be said about Bunker 13 is that it is scabrously, sardonically hilarious--you read it with constant amazed amusement and a real sense of guilt at finding it funny. Bahal has a real gift for pulling certainties about morality and who his narrator is out from under us. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

A funky and fiercely contemporary novel of high-tech weaponry and hedonism which should be a summer sensation. -- The Bookseller

A vividly created milieu is the key factor in the success of this arresting literary thriller. -- Publishing News

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0571217419
• ISBN 13: 9780571217410
• Binding: Paperback