Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Aug 1995
542 pages
Genre: Novels
Publication Information
Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain is an unforgettable reading experience, a contemporary Thousand and One Nights - with an eighteenth-century warrior-poet (now reincarnated as a typewriting monkey) and an Indian student home from college in America switching off as our Scheherazades. Ranging from bloody battles in colonial India to college anomie in California, from Hindu gods to MTV, Chandra's novel is engrossing, enthralling, impossible to put down - a remarkable meditation on quests and homecomings, good and evil, storytelling and redemption.
Click to the right or left of the sample to turn the page.
(If no book jacket appears in a few seconds, then we don't have an excerpt of this book or your browser is unable to display it)
"This is an astonishing and brilliant debut." - Publishers Weekly.
"As each story leads to another, Chandra's multifaceted narrative spins and whirls as hectically and alluringly as a kaleidoscope, leaving us a bit dazed if impressed." - Library Journal.
The information about Red Earth and Pouring Rain shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
Photo: Melanie Abrams
Vikram Chandra was born in 1961 in New Delhi. and completed most of his secondary education at Mayo College, a boarding school in Ajmer, Rajasthan. After a short stay at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai, he came to the United States as an undergraduate student. In 1984, he graduated from Pomona College (in Claremont, near Los Angeles) with a magna cum laude BA in English, with a concentration in creative writing. He then attended the Film School at Columbia University in New York. While in the Columbia library he happened upon the autobiography of Colonel James "Sikander" Skinner, a legendary nineteenth century soldier, born of an Indian mother and a British father. This book inspired him to write his first novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain, most...
... Full Biography
Link to Vikram Chandra's Website
Name Pronunciation
Vikram Chandra: Vik (rhymes with sick)-rum, Chund-rah
A nuanced portrait of war, and of three women haunted by the past and the secrets they hold.
About the book
A Place for Us
by Fatima Farheen Mirza
A deeply moving story of love, identity and belonging--the first novel from Sarah Jessica Parker's new imprint.
Reader Reviews
Win up to 12 copies for you & your book club!
The spellbinding prequel to Alice Hoffman's bestselling Practical Magic.
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends books that we believe to be best in class. Books that will whisk you to faraway places and times, that will expand your mind and challenge you -- the kinds of books you just can't wait to tell your friends about.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info & giveaways by email.
