book

Prison deals with the primary concerns of urban Indian society today: terrorism funded by free ranging sources outside the country, serial bomb blasts, insidious corruption in the police force, venal corruption at all levels of government, over zealous police officers beating suspects to death or "eliminating" them by staging "encounters"... Caught up in all this in the aftermath of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts is the protagonist, a journalist, the son of a rich Hindu father and Muslim mother who is enmeshed into a trap laid by his father’s powerful enemies.

The story branches out at a furious pace from the cell where Vivek wilts away in solitude, unravelling the history of the events that led to the incarceration of this innocent young man. The novel thought provokingly juxtaposes the mindless cruelty of the world of terrorism against the tenderness and beauty of the selfless love of Aruna and her unshakeable faith in the innocence of Vivek.

Somewhere as the story unfolds, Karim Khan, a terrorist involved in the bomb blasts, makes the chilling observation that behind the politics of terror that seeps through every organ of society like a cancer, lies a cold-blooded struggle for power. Who is the real traitor? Does society have to acquiesce in the basic rights and dignity of the law-abiding citizen being trampled underfoot in the course of the Law’s legitimate all-out effort to put down terror?