SURFACE
By Siddhartha Deb
Picador, Rs 495

Surface is a novel of shadows ? shadowy characters interacting in a lethal cat-and-mouse game against the shadowy backdrop of the Northeast.

The author, Siddhartha Deb, originally hails from the area, and that is not an insignificant fact. The heavily-wooded hilly terrain, the locals and the insurgents come to pulsating life in this novel. Deb, with consummate skill and an insider?s eye, brings to life an ambience fraught with menace, violence and suspicion ? anyone could be the ?enemy?.

The narrative, written in the first person, grips the reader from the start, plummetting him headlong into a vortex of intrigue. The pace never slackens till you turn the last page.

Amrit, the protagonist, is a reporter for the Sentinel. He finds himself in ?the region? ? an unnamed, remote part of north-east India. He is a middle-aged hack, working on a dead-end beat, hoping to turn his assignment into a story for a foreign magazine where he has a shadowy contact and an even more uncertain job prospect.

In the office archives, Amrit chances upon a faded photograph of a young woman. A porn actress, she has been taken captive by an insurgent group and is being paraded before the press as a warning to others like her. Obsessed with the woman, Amrit undertakes to track her down. But in this shadow-region, nothing is as it seems. Some leads peter out and others end in a cul-de-sac. As Amrit doggedly continues in his mission, he realizes that everything is a shadow, an illusion; the woman, the insurgents, the Prosperity Project, the director of the project, and even Amrit himself.

Initially, Amrit is threatened to back off, then enticed towards a terrifying truth. As Deb?s novel moves inexorably towards its end, both alluring and menacing ? the evocation of the shadow world is complete. The illusion and the truth, the real and the imagined, and the people caught in its web are all sharply etched out.

Unlike some Indian writers writing in English, Deb?s command over idiom and syntax is admirable. He has an ear for authentic dialogue and his characters speak and act like real people. This is a terse, well-written novel, as topical as today?s news. If you like a story with a slice of life and a healthy dose of menace, this is a novel for you.