The Association of Small Bombs

De: Karan Mahajan

Narrado por: Neil Shah

The Association of Small Bombs is an expansive and deeply humane novel that is at once groundbreaking in empathy, dazzling in acuity, and ambitious in scope.

When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family's television at a repair shop with their friend, Mansoor Ahmed, one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb - one of the many "small" bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world - detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb.

After a brief stint at a university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven into the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland.

Karan Mahajan writes brilliantly about the effects of terrorism on victims and perpetrators, proving himself to be one of the most provocative and dynamic novelists of his generation.

©2016 Karan Mahajan (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

MODI'S INDIA

“The Association of Small Bombs” ticks slowly but makes a loud noise as its message becomes clear. Karan Mahajan explains something about India that is only marginally understood by most Americans. It is no surprise that terrorism comes from racial, religious, and ethnic difference, magnified by inequality. What is a surprise is India’s terrorist acts are local events, poorly prosecuted and soon forgotten by those not directly involved.

Mahajan illustrates how inequality is an equal opportunity victimizer in India. The wider point of Mahajan’s story is that denial of equal opportunity for all races, religions, and ethnicities in any nation-state is a crime against humanity.

liked it

narrator was excellent, did excellent job of giving each character a distinct personality.

Four stars bc it felt like the author didn't quite stick the landing, but the build up was excellent. the plot itself felt as tho it ended strangely-- as tho nothing was rly resolved . but I was deeply invested in most of the characters and in the storyline. and, anyway, what is the purpose of narrative resolution in the first place? maybe the author chose to leave things loose bc there is no big narrative wrap up after a trauma. life just keeps going and going. so does this book.

I get not everything is a happy ending but..

What did you like best about The Association of Small Bombs? What did you like least?

Performance.. the development of each of the characters

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Being put into the minds of people committing terrorist attacks

Have you listened to any of Neil Shah’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

Any additional comments?

I get not having happy endings but.. just to have every single character have an unhappy ending?.. come on! I listed this long for SOME sort of reward. This was very depressing.

Amazing novel, exceptionally performed

This book was astonishing, and its narrator is outstanding, performing a wide range of voices and accents with distinction.

This Did Not Work For Me

I gave it three stars since this is one of those books. It is well written and definitely worth reading but just didn't work for me.

A tragedy of manners

What does Neil Shah bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He is an excellent reader, just the right amount of personalization of the various characters, and flawless pronunciation.

Any additional comments?

For about the first half of the book it was a kind of comedy of manners for terrorists and their victims, with a lot about the foibles of the all-too-human characters. The book becomes, I would say, progressively dark as the ramifications of destructiveness are played out: parent who, having lost their children, cannot find their way back to life. Young men who experience oppression as Muslims in India, as well as other losses, who lose their way and then their lives. Others who are ruined by the brutal and capricious state. The author explores all this with great sensitivity to his characters. The author is also a fine writer, with many interesting metaphors (which I wish I had written down), but who also maintains a good pace in his story.

Things do decidedly not come right in the end, but the book is not a complete downer either. In addition to the humor of human frailty, there is the author's compassion that keeps the lights on throughout.

Not gripping

I kept expecting the story to be a page turner and it was not. I found this book easy to put down.

Point of View

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely. This is an amazing story that expands our understanding of the different forces at work in our world today and which influence all of our lfves.

What did you like best about this story?

The author explores uncharted territory in today's fiction. The story was a sensitive and bold look at the so called "terrorists" who have become the scapegoat for the social, political, and economic ills of our world.

Which character – as performed by Neil Shah – was your favorite?

The boy who is injured in the terrorist attack is the most accessible character in the novel.

Who was the most memorable character of The Association of Small Bombs and why?

Each character is well developed and memorable. They all stand out in their own unique statement.

Any additional comments?

This is a very honest look at many sides of a very difficult question. The book provides an in depth appreciation of a controversial subject.

An engrossing modern tragedy

Like a Greek play the audience is slowly embraced by human emotionally driven fallibility. With tenacity one is pulled into a morass confused by understanding and repugnance. Pulled on to engage in what is both avoidable and predictable. The narrator adds to immersive involvement in the characters of the protagonists and antagonists. One leaves the story wondering where one stands. Questioning values, questioning reason.

Living in the Aftermath of the Art of a Bomb

Any additional comments?

Don Delillo’s Mao II proposes the troubling idea that terrorists have assumed the role of writers: they have become the individuals who, imagining in solitude, release their visions and reshape the world. The Association of Small Bombs answers that premise. It’s the story of two families responding to the fact of a terrorist’s bomb. They had ideas for how they wanted their lives to go. After the bomb, they find they can never fully escape its consequences.

This is a thoroughly depressing novel. The opening scene (and back cover copy) describe the explosion in which two young brothers are killed. Their friend survives, but he has to deal with injuries for the rest of his life. The parents of the children and many of the people they encounter spread a kind of contagion in the years that follow. Each tries to rebuild a life, but they find everything discolored by the fact of the violence they have endured.

Mahajan uses a striking narrative device in that the characters go their separate ways but find themselves reconnecting with one another and with the perpetrators. There is no escape. Nothing they do can undo the effects of the experience, and that leaves them perpetually diminished. It’s novelistic in the satisfying sense that we see a picture larger than anything the individual characters can see. There’s a haunting geometry to the way different people connect, yet they have no idea how their histories affect one another.

While I admire the essential premise here, I’m frustrated that we get it in total at the beginning and that nothing really alters it. Victims of violence suffer not just from their pain but from the lingering sense that some random force has changed the trajectory of their lives. They are forever marked, revealed to be cowards or ever unaware of the narrow limits of their capacity to shape their own lives. But we have that revealed in the opening pages. As Monsour staggers away from his dead friends, he already suspects everything he will ever learn.

There is, in other words, little development in the way the characters think about the world. As impressive as the novel is, it’s longer than it needs to be. Part of me wonders whether it would work as well as a short story, whether it would pack the same punch more efficiently in a smaller space.

That said, this is certainly compelling material. Even if the characters are essentially static, we get a glimpse of modern India, of a nation that seems to feel acted upon more than self-determining. Those elements, the ways in which we see tensions among Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, among urban and rural, and among the wealthy and the struggling, do justify its greater length. That material seems peripheral to the central insights here – peripheral to this novel, as I feel compelled to read it, as a response to Delillo – but it makes the whole worthwhile.

This is troubling material, given to us in bleak fashion. I’d like to close my eyes to much of it, but Mahajan makes me have to look.