Arrested for unbelievably answering all twelve questions on the Indian game show "Who Will Win a Billion?" semi-literate waiter Ram Mohammad Thomas explains to his lawyer how he knew the answer to each question due to events in his personal life, from a past meeting with a zealous Australian army colonel to his tour guide job at the Taj Mahal. A first novel. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
An NYRB Classics Original Basti is a beautifully written reckoning with the tragic history of Pakistan. Basti means settlement, a common place, and Intizar Husain’s extraordinary novel begins with a mythic, even mystic, vision of harmony between old and young, man and woman, Muslim and Hindu. Then Zakir, the hero, wakes to the modern world. Crowds gather. Slogans echo. Cities burn. Whether hunkered down with family or furtively meeting to exchange news with friends in cafés, Zakir is alone in a country lost to the politics of loneliness.