I. Allan Sealy: The Brainfever Bird

Reviewed by SIOBHAN HARVEY

If there's a new vitality to India's sense of nationhood, it's expressed nowhere more powerfully than in the startling talent of its most prominent writers: Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie et al. With the release of his third novel, The Brainfever Bird, I. Allan Sealy proves himself a rising star worthy of joining this luminous cast.

Everywhere, there is simple profundity in this story, which details the passion between an unemployed Russian scientist, Lev, who flees a derelict new Russia to sell state secrets, and an Indian puppeteer, Maya.

Like some gracious flight of fancy, the novel's fervour is most apparent in the dense rhythm of its prose. It demands your attention from the beginning, draws you into the unfolding plot.

And as you surrender, so you feel directed by a master storyteller. In the same way that Maya skilfully works her puppets, Sealy's insightfulness tweaks your imagination into drawing the most sophisticated parallels between universal and local minutiae: between the milieu of St Petersburg and Delhi; between a man running for his life and a woman eager to discover hers; yes, even between the compulsions of people driven to corrupt ends and the dynamics of a fleeting affair.

Against the backdrop of history — plague, the Chechen war, international arms inspections — the book remains grounded in characters like the alto-voiced wrestler-cum-masseur, Laiq, who owns the caged bird of the title; and author and television host Morgan, whose Russian heritage enables Lev to see his homeland, its poets and hardships from afar.

Characters and reader alike are stirred towards this novel's inevitable tragedy, those clever details Sealy sows at the beginning — the nurse who gives Lev his shots before his flight abroad, his young soldier son sleeping as he departs — returning to influence events in the most significant of ways.

It might only be April, but I'll not read a better book this year.

* Picador, $26.95

* Siobhan Harvey is an Auckland writer and tutor.