Finished reading Last man in tower. Much impressed. Almost as much by the tour de force in plot making, precision in description, subtlety and psychological insight in characterization as by the novel’s ability to raise some intriguing questions about the predilections of the middle class in the era of liberalisation-globalisation that has been holding sway in the present day India.
Comparison with his earlier novel ‘White Tiger’ is not at all out of place. The White tiger is not only alive and kicking and has metamorphosed into almost a mythical proponent of an early brutal version of capitalism but he is shown to revel in coaching and leading a cross section of the dithering middle class to the ways and means of the primitive accumulation of capital and thereby creating new and promising cubs to make even bigger leaps in Sanghai, India (of the future). Many reviewers have seen Dickensian ambience, surprisingly nobody mentioned Macbeth (and the character of Mrs Puri as an incarnation of Lady Macbeth) in the final denoument.
But on another plane, through a very clever plot and dramatic treatment the novel poses some very pertinent questions of our time : how is a critical conflict between an individual’s position, however quixotic that is, and the aspirations of a larger group of people/social segment driven (often actively instigated) by the agents of apparently inevitable progress of a capitalist economy going to be resolved. This conflict has echoes in the violent confrontation that we see today in India regarding acquisition of farm-lands for industrial exploitation, expropriation of tribal and forest lands for mining and other industrial explorations, or in the environment vs development debates.
The hallmark of a good literary work, irrespective of the personal opinion and the predilections of the author, is its ability to unflinchingly hold a mirror to society and expose the real social dynamics as they play out in all their complexity. Last man in tower, perhaps better than White tiger, does that.
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