Night Theater

A Novel

By: Vikram Paralkar

Narrated by: Raj Ghatak

A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work. But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds before sunrise.

So begins a night of quiet work, "as if the crickets had been bribed", during which the surgeon realizes his future is tied more closely to that of the dead family than he could have imagined. By dawn, he and his assistant have gained knowledge no mortal should have.

In this inventive novel charged with philosophical gravity and sly humor, Vikram Paralkar takes on the practice of medicine in a time when the right to health care is frequently challenged. Engaging earthly injustice and imaginaries of the afterlife, he asks how we might navigate corrupt institutions to find a moral center. Encompassing social criticism and magically unreal drama, Night Theater is a first novel as satisfying for its existential inquiry as for its enthralling story of a skeptical physician who arrives at a greater understanding of life's miracles.

©2018 Vikram Paralkar (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Gripping!

A thought-provoking read! Couldn't put it out of my mind-- certainly a story that will stick with me for a while.

Could not stop listening

I am not typically drawn to this genre of book. However, I heard it recommended on a podcast. I was hooked from the beginning. The story is so thrilling I could not stop listening. The different voices for the characters added depth and dimension to the recording. This is one I will listen to again.

Unique

This was really different. It's not a ghost story, although there are ghost; not fantasy, although there are fantastical events; not religious, although there are discriptions of angels and the afterlife, and not a medical thriller, although there are vivid discriptions of trauma surgery. I was intrigued and involved with the story and the characters. The book is enhanced by the narrator, he is wonderful. I'd recommend this if you want to listen to something really unique.

Excitedly Grimm and gentle

This book evokes thought, gratitude, excitement, and thrill. This offers a warm welcome to fictional reading.

Compelling and swift of pace.

A disgraced doctor is approached by a family, a husband, an expectant wife, and son, who have been slain by robbers. They have been given a reprieve from the afterlife--if the doctor can repair their wounds by dawn.
It's unfair to call Night Theater a horror novel in the traditional sense as it raises moral and philosophical questions that many do not (though some of the best do).
Worthwhile.