AustLit logo

AustLit

Arjaan Van Nimwegen Arjaan Van Nimwegen i(18525174 works by)
Gender: Unknown
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
6 8 y separately published work icon Amnesty Aravind Adiga , ( trans. Arjaan Van Nimwegen et. al.agent with title Gratie ) Amsterdam : Nieuw Amsterdam Uitgevers , 2020 18555342 2020 novel

'A riveting, suspenseful, and exuberant novel from the bestselling, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The White Tiger and Selection Day about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder—and thereby risk deportation.

'Danny—formerly Dhananjaya Rajaratnam—is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, Australia, denied refugee status after he fled from Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal life.

'But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. The deed was done with a knife, at a creek he’d been to with her before; and a jacket was left at the scene, which he believes belongs to another of his clients—a doctor with whom Danny knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: Come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported? Or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of this day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

'Propulsive, insightful, and full of Aravind Adiga’s signature wit and magic, Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

11 4 y separately published work icon Between the Assassinations Aravind Adiga , ( trans. Arjaan Van Nimwegen with title Tussen de Aanslagen ) Amsterdam : De Bezige Bij , 2012 Z1603702 2009 selected work novel

Set in the small Karnataka town of Kittur, ...Assassinations attempts a portrait of the town and its inhabitants, across class, caste, religion and occupation. Among them are an illiterate Muslim boy who is dazzled by a handsome Islamic terrorist a Dalit bookseller arrested for selling a pirated copy of The Satanic Verses a journalist confronting the yawning gap between what happened during a communal riot and what his newspaper is willing to print and the widow of a farmer who turns in vain to the local Communist leader for help. 'What emerges,' according to the blurb, 'is the moral biography of an Indian town in the seven-year period between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi-a time of great transformations.' (Publisher's blurb)

8 12 y separately published work icon Last Man in Tower : A Novel Aravind Adiga , ( trans. Arjaan Van Nimwegen with title De Laatste Man in de Toren ) Amsterdam : De Bezige Bij , 2011 Z1783763 2011 single work novel 'Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens his canvas to give us a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai.

At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the city's most elite addresses. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighbors—the residents of Vishram Society's Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah's luxury high-rise would be built—a generous buyout. They can't believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday.

Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore—and expose—it. Vivid, visceral, told with both humor and poignancy, Last Man in Tower is his most stunning work yet.' (Publisher's blurb)
43 36 y separately published work icon The White Tiger Aravind Adiga , ( trans. Arjaan Van Nimwegen with title De Witte Tijger ) Amsterdam : De Bezige Bij , 2009 Z1521556 2008 single work novel (taught in 2 units) 'Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.' (Publisher's blurb)
X