Book Club Discussion Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
This reading group guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Why is a penniless waiter from Mumbai sitting in a prison cell?
Is it because:
a) he has punched a customer;
b) he has drunk too much whisky;
c) he has stolen money from the till; or
d) he is the biggest quiz-show winner in history?
Ram Mohammad Thomas has been arrested. For answering twelve questions correctly on "Who Will Win a Billion?" Because a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school cannot know the smallest planet in the solar system, or the location of the Pyramids, or the plays of Shakespeare. Unless he has cheated.
Ram is rescued from the police cell where he has been interrogated all night, by what he can only imagine is an angel, though she is posing as a lawyer. Ram prepares his defense by reviewing television footage of his flawless performance. One at a time, he explains how he knew the answer to each question by telling a chapter of his amazing life - from the day he is salvaged from a dustbin, to his employment by a faded Bollywood star, to his meeting with a security-crazed Australian colonel, by way of a career as an over-creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal. Stunning a TV audience, he draws on a store of street wisdom, trivia, and accidental encounters to provide him with the essential keys, not only to the quiz show, but to life itself.
Set in modern India,
Q &A is a beguiling blend of high comedy and touching melancholy. Cutting across humanity in all its squalor and glory, Vikas Swarup presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle of good against evil, and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive.
Discussion Questions
- Why does Vikas Swarup choose the name "Ram Mohammad Thomas" for his protagonist? The names represent three different religions - besides displaying India’s diversity, what does this say about Ram Mohammad Thomas as a person?
- When Ram recounts the story of Father Timothy, he repeatedly refers to himself as an "idiot orphan boy" (pg. 49). Considering how well Father Timothy treats him, why does he describe himself in this manner?
- Ram has a recurring dream of a tall woman with black hair that obscures her face. At what moments does he have this dream, and why? What does this woman represent? Is she his biological mother? A symbol of hope? Abandonment?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Scribner.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
