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Riot
A Love Story
Shashi Tharoor

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Press Reviews

Riot
Booklist
Aug 1, 2001
There is no finer guide through the multilayered intricacies of India's
diverse ideologies than Tharoor, a longtime UN diplomat and celebrated
author. This novel unravels in spellbinding fashion . . . Tharoor, whose
previous works are fascinating explorations of India's social climate, here
reaches gingerly through a haze of violence and offers India in his cupped
palm like a tiny bird that has not yet spread its wings to find its destiny.
- Elsa Gaztambide

Riot
Library Journal
Aug 1, 2001
Drawing on his political savvy as a senior United Nations official, Tharoor
has written an ingenious story of the investigation into the mysterious
death of a young American woman during a Hindu-Muslim riot.
- Michelle Reale

Riot
Kirkus Reviews
Tharoor makes an anguished plea for religious tolerance, in a story about
the 1989 murder of a young American during a sectarian riot in northern
India. The New York-based author, an official at the United Nations, is
impressively knowledgeable and perceptive about the subcontinent's
history and current ills, including increasing intolerance of religious
diversity. And the story he tells graphically illustrates incendiary tensions
between the Hindus and Muslims.

Riot
Publishers Weekly
Aug 13, 2001
The death of an American woman in India serves as the pretext for a
thoughtful, sociologically precise novel about the religious tensions racking
the subcontinent. . . . Tharoor's story is about a larger topic than the
undoing of one innocent American--it is about the potential fragmentation
of the secular Indian republic, a tragedy in the making.

Riot
The Washington Post
In his new book, Riot,Tharoor leaves satire behind and points his
remarkable talent toward tragedy. . . . He succeeds in making his
characters breathe on the page. He also can make vivid the complicated
valves of India's centuries-old communal violence. You are never, ever,
bored, no matter how tough the political and historical going. . . . In our
own country of many caravans, Riot,is not just a splendidly readable novel
of memorable characters and complexity. It helps us to see, honestly and
compassionately, the delicate treacheries we can be most blind to in
ourselves, especially in times of triumph or grievous pain.
- Lorraine Adams

Riot
Washington Times
Dec 23, 2001
As a primer into the modern history of the Hindu-Muslim conflict, as an
exploration of its impulses, Riotis simply brilliant. One comes away from
Mr. Tharoor’s novel aware of the many subtleties of rural Indian life, of
how easily Indian passions can become inflamed. It is as penetrating a
look at fanaticism as any I have read.
- Sudip Bose

Riot
Baltimore Citypaper Online
One of the finest novelists in a crop of recently harvested Indian writers.
Tharoor’s prose is passionate and clever, and his narrative experiments
evoke the pluralism that he insists is India’s essence.
- Susan Muaddi Darraj

Riot
Seattle Times
Sep 23, 2001
Tharoor, perhaps one of the finest novelists writing in English today,
delivers a tale of ignited passions wrapped in a heart-felt treatise on the
complexities of Indian society. . . . Rarely has cultural clash been more
sensitively explored. . . . Within thirteen pages, I found myself reading
aloud, reveling in Tharoor’s perfect ear for the words of everyone from a
self-important minor civil servant to a young girl in love. . . . I laid Riot
down understanding that there’s no Hindu pope, no Hindu Sunday, and no
such thing as a Hindu heresy, but there may be a Hindu Shakespeare.
Even if he lives in New York.
- Deloris Tarzan Ament

Riot
Hartford Courant
Oct 28, 2001
Remarkably inventive . . . Riot is like a Rashomonfor the late 20th
century. Tharoor has given us a gift. For through his profound novelm we
can appreciate the subjectivity of truth and the proliferation (and
detriment) of cultural blindness in the West and the East.

Riot
Colorado Springs Independent
Oct 4, 2001
Tharoor is an eloquent chronicler of Indian history and politics and Riotis a
dazzling piece of work.

Riot
Newsline (Karachi)
Jan 2, 2002
The often alarming proximity of love, hate and history is richly drawn out
in Shashi Tharoor’s latest novel Riot.Endearing details like Lakshman’s
obsession with Wilde help to give the characters depth . . . Tharoor’s
command over the different styles he uses is impressive. He is equally at
ease with a transcript of the Sikh police chief’s caustic, expletive-ridden
style as he is with a tender moment between the two lovers. Everywhere
his writing is sharp and concise, and the book has
...more
been sensitively structured. It retains a highly convincing balance between
the ‘plot’ (in the form of the love affair) and the politics (in the form of the
sectarian riots). Never once does Riotfeel ponderous or heavy-handed.
What Tharoor has managed to do is give us a love story, potent social
commentary and broad historical analysis all rolled into one novel.
- Emile Chabal

Riot
The Free Lance-Star
Dec 16, 2001
The Western reader will finish the book . . . with a mind expanded by a
new understanding of violent religious conflict that a secular society so
often struggles to comprehend.
- Cody Ellerd

Riot
Asian Wall Street Journal
Dec 14, 2001
[Riot’s] greatest virtue is that without being pedantic or didactic, it
presents an accurate picture of the thinking of the various forces that are
competing for supremacy in contemporary India.
- Mr. Tripathi

Riot
Persimmon: Asian Literature, Arts, and Culture
Apr 1, 2002
By weaving together various perspectives on the historical Babri Masjid
mosque-Ram Janmabhoomi temple issue with the various possible
motives for the murder of his character Priscilla Hart, Tharoor deftly
reframes the communal riot narrative . . . to demonstrate how Western
imperialism remains implicated in postcolonial communalism. The novel's
multiple first-person political perspectives make it a good introduction to
the political climate of north India.
- Karline McLain

Riot
News India
May 24, 2002
Amazing . . . it makes us wonder if artists are, indeed, endowed with a
third eye, enabling them to see characters and events long before they
figure in newspaper headlines. . . . Tharoor also has been the unofficial
ambassador of India’s perennial ethos to the rest of the world . . . able to
 click open the shutters in people’s minds. . . . “An unacknowledged
legislator of mankind.”
- Jyotirmoy Datta

Riot
World Literature Today
May 1, 2002
Tharoor presents his characters with sensitivity and understanding, deftly
bringing out the complications of a multicultural society.

Riot
Asia & the Pacific Reviews
Jun 1, 2002
Tharoor presents his characters with sensitivity and understanding, deftly
bringing out the complications of a multicultural society. . . . Riotacquires
a poignancy that is sure to move critics and readers alike.
- Ramlal Agarwal

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