A Novel
Published in India by Penguin India.
To be published in the German language by Ullstein Verlag.
About the Book
Saltwater is a story about a world without anchor, where rich young boys and girls drift and collide, smashing each other to smithereens. There are no inhibitions here, everything is allowed.
This is the raw, uncut footage of an entire generation losing it, together, one shiny party at a time.
The novel is actually a collection of stories, bound tightly around the protagonist. Stories detailing lives of faces he grew up with and increasingly doesn't recognise - the fallen heroes and the wayward girls all chasing each other in bright-eyed purgatory.
This is about the death of romantic love - exemplified by the girls: the date a rich slob and sleep around girl, the disenchanted long distance girl, the unattainable girl, the inerasable girl - and the ghosts of the many hundreds of girls who make an impression on the obsessively sexual imagination of a hyper pubescent protagonist.
This is about Rish, who is rich, listless and tremendously insecure. He has limited ambition and no larger purpose. Desperate to fit in, desperate to win, his constant social struggle battles his own increasing disillusionment with the space he occupies in the world.
This is not a story of armchair epiphanies. This is a sordid trip showcasing the sexy, the ugly, the suppressed and the raging - all through a cloud of throbbing chemical urgency.
Backcover Blurb
Young, Fucked Up and Beautiful
Rish returns home to Bombay, halfway through his college in the US, unable to deal with the suicide of his friend Sahil - a manic depressive with an uncontrollable drug habit. He touches down in a world of careless money and no rules.
As he struggles to repair old friendships and rekindle old love, he's quickly sucked into the same old pattern of magic pills, endless parties and random sex. Rish's quest for redemption quickly degenerates into an unstoppable roller coaster into the nights of South Bombay, tearing through exclusive nightclubs and sea facing penthouses.
When it crashes - no one will be left standing
Saltwater is the raw, uncut footage of an entire generation losing it, one shiny party at a time.
A Testimonial about Saltwater Book from a Best seller Novelist Durjoy Datta:
"I picked Saltwater because it was written by one of my fellow authors of Metro Reads. No, that's a lie. I picked it up because the author had sold the German rights of the book for a considerable advance and I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. In all sincerity I picked up the book in contempt, wanting not to like it (I met the author and he's a nice guy). But the book was so good I hated it with a vengeance and then I loved it with the same intensity. It's a very elitist story which a lot of rich, decadent kids would identify with, but it's also a story you can enjoy as an outsider. In a way that you would enjoy reading American Psycho, wanting to be there, all fucked up. The best part of the book was you could leave the book for a week and then pick up and find yourself immediately drawn to the world of Rishi, the main protagonist."
Published by : Penguin Books India
Rights : Indian Subcontinent
Category : Fiction, Crime
Binding : Paperback
Language : English
Availability : Amazon, crossword
Price : Rs.250/-