Bunker 13: a novel - Softcover

Bahal, Aniruddha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996235256 ISBN 13: 9780996235259

Publisher: Dunn Books, 2017

Synopsis

Minty Mehta, aka MM, is a thrill-seeker, a disgraced, self-destructive, ex-army cadet with a taste for hard drugs and kinky sex, and a shrewd reporter who will do anything to get a story. His connections reach deep into the heart of India’s unsavory political establishment, and into the army—his current beat—where his bravery earns the trust and admiration of even more unsavory sources.

Following Special Forces on a series of deadly missions on the Kashmiri border, MM confirms his suspicion that a rogue band of officers is smuggling drugs and captured weapons out of India’s jungle frontier. When a raid on an enemy bunker uncovers an enormous cache of arms and high-grade heroin, the commander in charge taps MM to unload the goods, and he finds himself enmeshed in an international net of gunrunning, gang warfare, and double-dealing more dangerous than anything he’s undertaken so far.

Cynical, knowing, highly capable and deeply motivated, MM is a postmodern hero in the same nihilistic vein as the protagonists of Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. The debut novel by the investigative journalist dubbed “The King of Sting” and “India’s most feared reporter” for his exposure of illegal arms dealing and other corruption in India, joins the ranks of world-class suspense authors with an insider’s look at the serpentine challenges of modern India.

 

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:

“Imagine Catch-22 rewritten by Hunter S. Thompson, then grafted onto a plot co-authored by Carl Hiaasen and Tom Clancy, set in modern India.” — John Williams, The Guardian

“Bahal's use of the second person heightens suspense and adds psychological depth...an offbeat, fun thriller.”    — Publishers Weekly

“There's a lot of fresh, crackling action here for thrill junkies.”  — Booklist

"Fascinating, energized and quite a mindf**k. It picks you up and whips you around like a whirlwind."  — Time Out

“India's grown-up answer to M*A*S*H; it's just as funny, farcical and ferocious.” — Literary Review

"Inspiring. Much like The Naked and the Dead, Bunker 13 is elevated by first-hand authenticity." —The Observer
 

About this edition

• Publisher: Dunn Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0996235256
• ISBN 13: 9780996235259
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 366