There are times in one’s reading life that bring good books out of nowhere and one is compelled to praise such pieces of literature – meaningful, interesting and ideal to be recommended. I read such a book recently and it is written, fortunately, by a young novelist named Rishabh Bhatnagar. His novel The Great Indian Bust is one of those many books that attract readers from different interest groups. The Great Indian Bust: A Coming of Age Fiction, as the subtitle gives it away, is a novel about a person whose life is narrated in a first-person narrative by the protagonist himself. The novel begins with descriptions of the protagonist’s grandfather and his early demise during a hunt in the jungle. The story progresses and reaches to the development of the protagonist into a youth via the course of first love (or infatuation or attraction) and to the desire of doing something significant.

In spite of being written in the first-person narrative and highly being personal as it is directly influenced by or, in fact, based on the life of the author himself, the novel is capable of keeping a reader engaged until the last with witty and interesting descriptions of vivid shades of life. The one thing that strikes the readers is the persuasive power of the novel; it has the characteristics to take a reader back in time and compel nostalgia to take over minds. Who does not want to remember the good old days when there were no worries and the only aim of life was getting joy – joy at any cost!

Rishabh Bhatnagar is a young novelist, 23 now. His writing is good enough to be appreciated by the readers and it has attracted the readership especially from the teenage reader groups and youths who like reading about the first-hand experience of life as a teenager in Indian conditions. The novel takes the readers to different locations in India – Delhi and Chandigarh are major among those. Because the protagonist is sharing his life story with the readers himself, there is a humane touch to everything being told in the novel and it feels personal.

On the construct level of this piece of fiction, things are mostly simple. The language is simple and it comes directly from the local guys in the novel which further connects a reader (the young reader especially) with the story. The plot is simple and easy to comprehend. There are no extraordinary situations in the novel on the apparent level. The life of a common young man in India – if at all there is an apparent theme in the novel to be found. In terms of length, the novel won’t take more than a day even if the reader is too lazy…

I will recommend this coming of age fiction to the readers who may bear some personal stuff easily. The novel is not extraordinary and this is what makes it the same. It is a simple tale of a common man and that’s why it feels like anyone’s story of life. You will get that once you begin reading it. You can get a Kindle copy of this book from Amazon India stores by clicking the link below:

buy the novel – click here to go to Amazon

review by Shubham for Featured Books Blog