Dark dispatches

Immaculately crafted and passionately imagined, Nirmal Verma's Dark Dispatches confirms his reputation as one of the finest writers and profoundest thinkers in modern India. The novel, set in the Emergency, traces the slow slide of an idealistic journalist into suspicion, fear and despair. The protagonist's fate, his final estrangement from his friends and family, is a result both of the dark times in which he lives and of his own inability to love. Through the life of a single individual, written in brooding and terrifying images, Nirmal Verma tells the story of a nations's tragic failure to create democratic spaces where non-violent and ethically just action is possible.