Absolute Jafar

Brighu is getting older. Badminton has replaced judo, irritation has replaced anger, metabolism has slowed down. Yet, some things remain: the inability to take a cab, anxieties about the digital universe and panic for the future. So Brighu walks. Unceasingly, through known and unknown terrains, with the pointlessness of a detective without a case.

An Indo-Pak romance withstands years of toxic nationalism between two hostile countries, only to unravel in a third, in Europe. Jafar, born of that romance, inherits a history he has no control over. As he grows up in Berlin, his father, Brighu, desperate to hold on to the fantasies of a fading home, tells him bedtime stories: of sultans and jinns, of street food and eccentric cousins, of Delhi, Calcutta and Karachi.

Set in a world where bureaucracies and borders shape human relationships, Sarnath Banerjee’s Absolute Jafar is a poignant meditation on belonging and becoming. Perhaps the author’s most personal work yet, it is a bittersweet rhapsody, rich in humanity, wit and imagination.