"Once Upon A Time In Scandinavistan!"
Coming shortly from Hachette (India), to a bookshop near you!
Cover art by Vinayak Varma (click on image to see fullsize cover)
“Gautampuri city, Sweden Pradesh. Public Intelligence Officer Barsk reported several deaths due to charring of body parts and possible foul play involving cannibalism, at the Tandoori Moose restaurant, off Friendship Chowk. One BC (bad character) absconding. Suspect is a deviant girl, blonde, around twenty, no particular distinguishing marks except that she was last seen wearing a cook's uniform. Officer requested backup, forensic team. A memo has been sent to all concerned parties...”
A crime novel set in the grunge of a somewhat futuristic Europe after it has been colonized by India - its industries bought over by Asian capitalists; its administration, by popular referendum, entrusted to file-pushing babus; its food infused with the flavours of curry. Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan is a novel that both thrills and appalls the reader with its luridly detailed landscapes and its unrelentingly dark humour.
“Zac O’Yeah, who seems to possess unerring comic pitch as well as a sharp social vision, pulls off a charming conceit In Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan.” Pankaj Mishra, author of “Temptations of the West”
“Who knew that the ultimate manifestation of ‘Swadeshi’ would be ‘Swedishi’? Zac O’Yeah’s detective novel, set in a Sweden taken over by India, shows us why and how. In giving us a comic and suspenseful story that reimagines the relationship between east and west in utterly new terms, Once Upon a Time in Scandivanistan hustles its way onto the small shelf occupied by such counterfactual classics as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.” Siddhartha Deb, author of “The Point of Return”
“Uncanny, and original, and always funny. At first glance, Zac O’Yeah’s new novel seems to be about Stieg Larsson coming to India. But then you spot other clues. This thriller isn’t even about Europe being colonized by Indians. This is a sly, remarkable book about the death of the present, and the future that is already here.” Amitava Kumar, author of “Home Products”
Previews from the press:
Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan by Zac O’Yeah is an ingeniously stylised, dystopian crime novel. (Hindustan Times)
Philip K Dick meets Manohar Kahaniyan in a noir novel set in a Swedish curry house. (Tehelka Magazine)
Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan subjects the Swedes to a fate no twisted crime novelist has devised yet: political and cultural domination by an Indian superpower. With the IAS in tow... The reason it works, behind the beat of bodies hitting the floor, is that O’Yeah’s treatment of the Indo-Swedish future isn’t just a masala-pastiche. (Timeout Magazine)
READ EXCERPTS
And check out the book in the nearest bookshop in August 2010!
Or wait another two years for the movie version...
