Sacred Games is a mystery/thriller novel by Indian-American author Vikram Chandra published in 2006. Upon release, it received critical acclaim and subsequently won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award.
Sacred Games runs mostly on two parallel tracks. One winding through the criminal underworld of Mumbai (then Bombay) in the 1980s and 1990s, and the other through a tense modern-day hunt for the explanation behind a notorious dead gangster’s bizarre final words.
The only Sikh police officer in the city, Inspector Sartaj Singh, is seemingly invited to pursue Mumbai’s most legendary crime boss Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde reveals a harrowing timeline and a few hints of the identity of his collaborators before taking his own life.
Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs on the Mumbai police force, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But “the silky Sikh” is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip-off as to the secret hide-out of the legendary boss of G-Company, he’s determined that he’ll be the one to collect the prize.
Vikram Chandra’s keenly anticipated new novel is a magnificent story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side. Drawing inspiration from the classics of nineteenth-century fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra’s own life and research on the streets of Mumbai, Sacred Games evokes with devastating realism the way we live now but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.
