Book review: KR Meera's Assassin hooks you with many questions, no straight answers

The book peppers you with questions: “Have you ever been shot at?” “Have you entered a dead person’s room alone?”  The sense of unease, disturbance and melancholy grows with the narrative. The questions turn to “Have you ever shat and pissed yourself? After infancy? In the presence of strangers? “Has your lover sold you to a man old enough to be your father for defaulting on interest payments?” Later: “Have you ever imagined your life as a path, walked back on it, to the crossroad where the path you currently chose starts? Have you lingered there and sighed?” “Have you ever experienced yourself carrying within yourself a rapidly growing tree?” Each time you are told it is a pity if you have not, and why.  Each of these incidents only underscore life’s breadth.

The book's protagonist Satyapriya has done, felt, seen and experienced all of this and much more, making her who she is. Melodramatic yet pragmatic,  foolish yet intelligent, courageous yet fearful, painfully dying and shedding her old self and birthing herself afresh, surviving a thousand assassinations.  Satyapriya is matched, rather outmatched by her mother, who is not fazed by anything. Not her husband's invalid status, his death, murder attempts. Not bankruptcy nor debts or demonetization. Her strength never wavers. In her author's note, K.R. Meera notes that much of the mother's quirkiness comes from her.

The book makes you squirm. Set around the time of demonetization, it probes power dynamics - who bears the power to invalidate or validate? Who suffers? The book is a commentary on Indian politics. It is a book about money, at the calculated impoverishment of the most desperate. It is a book about power and its relation to caste, wealth and gender. At one point the book suggests masculinity should be renamed power-li-nity.  Many characters alternatively gain and lose wealth and their power over others changes. Their caste remains the same - indelible. It is a book about patriarchy. Its best parts are those dealing with human nature - never static and always layered. It explores the humanity in all of us - even the vilest among us. The book is also a thriller, deftly inserting hard unpleasant truths, between folds of engaging fiction.

One of the most anticipated releases of this year, Assassin is an English  translation of the Malayalam novel Ghathakan by K.R. Meera.  J. Devika’s translation is brilliant and preserves all the metaphors, similes, flourishes, ambiguity and sarcasm.  Devika, an accomplished and award-winning translator, has translated many of K.R. Meera’s works, including her short stories and her Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Aarachar as Hangwoman in English. This familiarity makes the translations seem effortless, capturing turns of phrases and keeping the reader immersed in the narrative.

Through its meandering narrative “Assassin” entwines social critique, suspense and profound introspection leaving the reader thinking about the book for days.