Absolute Jafar

Brighu is getting older. Badminton has replaced judo irritation has replaced anger metabolism has slowed down. Yet some things remain: the inability to take a cab anxieties about the digital universe and panic for the future. So Brighu walks. Unceasingly through known and unknown terrains with the pointlessness of a detective without a case.An Indo-Pak romance withstands years of toxic nationalism between two hostile countries only to unravel in a third in Europe. Jafar born of that romance inherits a history he has no control over. As he grows up in Berlin his father Brighu desperate to hold on to the fantasies of a fading home tells him bedtime stories: of sultans and jinns of street food and eccentric cousins of Delhi Calcutta and Karachi.Set in a world where bureaucracies and borders shape human relationships Sarnath Banerjee''s Absolute Jafar is a poignant meditation on belonging and becoming. Perhaps the author''s most personal work yet it is a bittersweet rhapsody rich in humanity wit and imagination.