Apu’s World

There are murder mysteries that are all about the murder; tightly knit, with a closed group of suspects and a detective moving the spotlight from one to the other - think Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. And then there are murder mysteries where the murder is just part of the tale; where it really becomes an excuse to look at a larger setting and in the process of solving the mystery, gives us something quite different. Aditya Sudarshan’s A Nice, Quiet Holiday was one such enjoyable work, and this week, I’ve had the pleasure of reading another such work by an Indian author : Madhulika Liddle’s The Englishman’s Cameo.

Set in the opulent, yet fading Mughal court of Emperor Shahjahan,  The Englishman’s Cameo is part murder mystery and part historical novel, for its charms lie as much in its descriptions of life in the Mughal era. It’s protagonist is Muzaffar Jang, a somewhat atypical Omrah (nobleman) who prefers spending time with his books, pets and lowlife friends rather than indulging himself in wine, women and song, unlike other notables of the era. Thanks to one such disreputable friend, he finds himself involved in a murder mystery that soon turns out to be more complex than imagined.

Liddle excels in descriptions of Mughal era Dilli and its noble citizens - their wealth, decadence and hollowness are beautifully captured and the story itself set against the backdrop of an Empire whose best days are behind it. Against this backdrop, she also gives the characters some very natural dialogue that in English, nevertheless manages to create an image of the formal, beautiful Persian that must have been spoken in court. The Englishman’s Cameo is unlike a tightly knit murder mystery where one knows that the murderer will be chosen from an already introduced cast of characters. Here, instead, the plot keeps widening so that motives and murderers are quite unclear until the end.

I’ve never been a fan of tightly defining genres and elevating some books as literary while considering others mere genre fiction. The Englishman’s Cameo proves that a good genre fiction book can be as well-written and perhaps much more interesting than some books that claim literary merit.

Publisher: Hachette India

Price: Rs. 295

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