“Wow!” I said to myself as I read the last line of a 573-page Malayalam novel, Ghathakan (Killer ) by K R Meera. Since most readers of this blog don’t/can’t read Malayalam, I won’t write a review but deal with one of its major themes which I found irresistible. Wealth is the ultimate value or virtue in today’s world. Meera’s novel which is a detective story on the one hand and brilliant literature on the other shows how money has come to rule all of us – our politicians and ascetics and the whole lot of us. Interestingly, the novel opens with the infamous demonetisation of 8 Nov 2016. A week after that catastrophe which our Prime Minister hurled at a nation of a billion plus citizens, the protagonist of the novel is attacked by a killer. Satyapriya, the 44-year-old protagonist, is determined to find out why someone wants to kill her. The quest takes her on an arduous and excruciating journey into her past and the pasts of many people including her father, a child abuser. Demoneti
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