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Hero: A fable
A second novel by the author of "The Trotter-Nama". It is a humorous fable about the glittering but tawdry extravaganza of Indian political life. Hero is a nobody from the South who becomes a superstar of the Bombay cinema and then, after an assassination attempt, his country's prime minister.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Irwin Allan Sealy
12Ìýbooks23ÌýfollowersOne of India's post-Independence writers, Allan Sealy was born in 1951 in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. After schooling in Lucknow, he attended Delhi University, then studied and worked in the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Now he spends much of his time in Dehra Dun. His eye for place and his evocative descriptions are apparent in all his novels and in his travelogue, From Yukon to Yukatan. Sealy's first novel, The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle, is a tale of seven generations of an Anglo-Indian family. His more recent novel, The Everest Hotel: A Calendar, gained him an international following after being short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1998.
According to Alex Tickell of the University of York, Allan Sealy has introduced "a memorable cast of characters in The Everest Hotel [and] his talents are equally evident in the luminous descriptive passages in the text, and in his feel for the lighter brushwork of natural detail, and shades of color and texture."
Allan Sealy has won a number of awards for his writing including the Commonwealth Best Book Award in 1989, Sahitya Akademi Award in 1991 and the Crossword Book Award in 1998.
The Library of Congress has four works by him.
According to Alex Tickell of the University of York, Allan Sealy has introduced "a memorable cast of characters in The Everest Hotel [and] his talents are equally evident in the luminous descriptive passages in the text, and in his feel for the lighter brushwork of natural detail, and shades of color and texture."
Allan Sealy has won a number of awards for his writing including the Commonwealth Best Book Award in 1989, Sahitya Akademi Award in 1991 and the Crossword Book Award in 1998.
The Library of Congress has four works by him.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 16, 2021
Yatha praja tatha rajaÌý
I. Allan Sealy’s Hero is a novel of post-modernistic take on Bollywood and the Indian political system. It is the rags to riches story of a movie star, of an unnamed southern origin, making it to the ultimate in Indian governance.ÌýHis nativity is left ambiguous, but it is not exactly indiscernible. Coconut oil, finger bananas, green fields, and in the proximity of Kanyakumari, that star is from Kerala of course. The first part of the novel chronicles the progress of this miraculous kid to stardom, him eventually getting shot by another actor, and becoming a politician with dark glasses. We can see a parallel to the life of MGR here. The good souled protagonist envisions karmascope, an idea of reaching out to millions of people at the same time and offering inner peace to everyone. It happens eventually in a funny way, however, dark reality and his paranoia lead the country to an Orwellian state. I feel a part of this work is an homage to George Orwell, with references like DiDi/Big Sister and Ministry of Truth.
Mainstream Indian cinema (Bollywood) is in the genre of magic realism, where supernatural and bizarre things happen in an otherwise linear realistic format. This book is described as a fable, adapts the Bollywood formula, and is metafictional. So, I can understand stock characters, bizarre events, and unrealistic coincidences. It is part of the formula, no qualms with that. Bollywood masala works only when the viewer is not annoyed and gets carried away. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in this novel. The first half is too familiar and romanticized. Then the omniscient first-person narrative, however, the narrator is a person in shadows, not the protagonist. Half the time he is an omnipotent sleuth. I feel this had sort of forced the author to piece together episodes in a certain way. Postmodernist work is supposed to be a comic play on existing genres. Once you take out earlier metafictional elements and ensuing screenwriter notes, the tone is too serious and the experience is too tedious.
I. Allan Sealy’s Hero is a novel of post-modernistic take on Bollywood and the Indian political system. It is the rags to riches story of a movie star, of an unnamed southern origin, making it to the ultimate in Indian governance.ÌýHis nativity is left ambiguous, but it is not exactly indiscernible. Coconut oil, finger bananas, green fields, and in the proximity of Kanyakumari, that star is from Kerala of course. The first part of the novel chronicles the progress of this miraculous kid to stardom, him eventually getting shot by another actor, and becoming a politician with dark glasses. We can see a parallel to the life of MGR here. The good souled protagonist envisions karmascope, an idea of reaching out to millions of people at the same time and offering inner peace to everyone. It happens eventually in a funny way, however, dark reality and his paranoia lead the country to an Orwellian state. I feel a part of this work is an homage to George Orwell, with references like DiDi/Big Sister and Ministry of Truth.
Mainstream Indian cinema (Bollywood) is in the genre of magic realism, where supernatural and bizarre things happen in an otherwise linear realistic format. This book is described as a fable, adapts the Bollywood formula, and is metafictional. So, I can understand stock characters, bizarre events, and unrealistic coincidences. It is part of the formula, no qualms with that. Bollywood masala works only when the viewer is not annoyed and gets carried away. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in this novel. The first half is too familiar and romanticized. Then the omniscient first-person narrative, however, the narrator is a person in shadows, not the protagonist. Half the time he is an omnipotent sleuth. I feel this had sort of forced the author to piece together episodes in a certain way. Postmodernist work is supposed to be a comic play on existing genres. Once you take out earlier metafictional elements and ensuing screenwriter notes, the tone is too serious and the experience is too tedious.
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