The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha review – hopeless sons vs brilliant daughters | Fiction
In Delhi the seasons are “human-fucked”, explains Tara Saxena, the narrator-protagonist of The Tiger’s Share. Autumn is the “season of smogs and mellow murderousness”; once the smoke arrives in October, “we could no longer see the sky”. Over summer the Loo, a dry “caramelising” wind, slurs through the city, while inside their flats people “lived as cheese and chocolate do in India, refrigerated”. Now and then comes the brief respite of rain. In its aftermath, people head out into the parks to enjoy the momentary cool, the only time when the air is “useably fresh, like a banana that is only one-third rotten”.
Food-related imagery abounds in Keshava Guha’s second novel; you are never allowed to forget that all…
