Vikas Swarup: Q and A

We've all watched shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and shouted answers at the television. But a mere million? Here's one better: a novel about an Indian quiz show which, because the prize cache is in rupees, makes the contestant who can correctly answer 12 questions a billionaire.

The trouble for the show's producers, in this clever debut by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, is that they depend on a combination of wrong answers, dumb wannabes and long-running support from advertisers to produce the income they need to pay out the winner, if there is one.

So when a semi-literate 18-year-old waiter from Mombai called Ram Mohammed Thomas comes on, they expect him to lose and get off quickly. But Ram sails through each and every increasingly tricky question; the producers (shady characters, these) don't have the money to pay him, and poor Ram is arrested and accused of cheating.

All is not lost. Comely lawyer Smita Shah arrives to bail Ram out, and takes him to her home to prepare for the next day's court appearance. Smita and Ram watch each of the questions on video, then Ram tells her how and why he knew the answer. This young man may be barely educated, impoverished, even a killer, but he has lived a tumultuous life and his quick wits have absorbed an enormous amount of information.

Question by question, chapter by chapter, Ram Mohammed Thomas — there's a story behind his Hindu-Muslim-English name — takes Smita, and us, on a tour of his life and in the process, we learn about Indian movie stars, paedophilia, life in the chawls (slums), alcoholism and drug abuse, the mutilation of children so they can beg, gangsters, poetry, cricket, the histories of the Taj Mahal and the 1971 Indian-Pakistan conflict, autism and prostitution. It is also threaded with the saving graces of friendship, loyalty and love, providing a rare, seemingly effortless brew of humour, drama, romance and social realism.

And it's great fun. Ram has been an extremely enterprising boy during his short life, taking work wherever he can find it, and in one extremely amusing chapter "How to Speak Australian", he uses his experience as servant for the Australian Defence Attache in Delhi to come up with the answer to: "When a Government declares a foreign diplomat persona non grata, what does it mean?"

By the time Ram comes to the final question — in which key is Beethoven's Piano Sonata No 29 — he, and his lucky one-rupee coin, are flying, and the epilogue, six months after his triumph, reveals some most satisfactory uses for the money, including some nice juicy revenge on truly villainous types.

Swarup, who will visit Auckland in May as part of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, has achieved a triumph with this thrilling, endearing work which gets into the heart and soul of modern India. It has been published in 14 languages and Film Four in Britain has bought the film rights. Fittingly, Q and A has also made him a millionaire.

* Linda Herrick is the Herald arts and books editor.
* Doubleday, $34.95