Jennifer Nash A.X. Ahmad.The crime genre is getting a rare South Asian touch with the “The Caretaker,†a novel by A.X. Ahmad. In his debut novel, the 45-year-old author, who was born in Kolkata and lives in Washington, D.C., crafts a story centering on Ranjit Singh, a former Indian Army captain who is trying to run from his disgraceful past as he works as a caretaker of vacation homes in Martha's Vineyard.
The fast-paced thriller, the first in a trilogy, will be released Tuesday by Minotaur Books in the United States, which is a division of St. Martin's Press, but the book is also the introduction to a larger initiative by HarperCollins India to publish a line of suspense novels exclusively by Indian writers. “The Caretaker†will be available in India in June.
Mr. Ahmad recently spoke with India Ink about his interest in mysteries, the inspiration for his work and the state of thrillers today.
What was your inspiration for The Caretaker?
Three separate pieces came together to inspire the book:
My wife's family has a house in Martha's Vineyard, and I used to spend summers there. Most of the summer workers are immigrants, and I became intrigued by this community and wondered what would happen if one of these immigrants stayed on the Island during the winter, when all the tourists were gone.
Courtesy of Minotaur Press The book cover of A. X. Ahmad's “Caretaker.â€Also, a family friend on the Island is a caretaker and looks after many super-luxury homes. These mansions lie empty for most of the year, and he told me about how he would wander through them, opening closets and learning about the owners from what they had left behind. I immediately thought it was a great setting for a novel.
And finally, I happened across a self-published book of black-and-white photographs of the Siachen Glacier. I was stunned to find that India and Pakistan were fighting each other in this remote, freezing cold world of ice and snow. A lot of the soldiers were Sikhs. I began to imagine a Sikh army captain from this world, who has to leave the army in disgrace and emigrate to the U.S.A., and he ends up on Martha's Vineyard.
Why did you decide to write a thriller for your first novel?
I came to the U.S.A. from India when I was 17 and the question always was: what I was going to write about? I could write about my life as an immigrant here, but that had already been done so beautifully by writers like Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Writing a thriller allowed me to move beyond the material that an immigrant writer is confined to. I didn't have to write a nostalgic tale of the “old country†or an immigrant novel about assimilation.
How did you come up with your central character, Ranjit Singh?
One real-world incident was in the back of my mind when I began to write this book. Right after 9/11, I went to my supermarket in Cambridge, Mass., and a lot of the cashiers were Sikhs. They were very scared that they would be mistaken for terrorists, so one man had put a large sticker of the American flag on the front of his turban. That memory stayed with me.
Sikhs, with their beards and turbans, are hyper-visible in America at a time when people are more and more xenophobic. In my book, I wanted to explore what it felt like to be an immigrant in post-9/11 America, and so I chose a Sikh protagonist.
You've written many essays and short stories focusing on immigrant life, and this novel also touches on the same theme. Why do you feel that it's so important to weave this idea into a mystery story?
If I was to write a novel about a person who has grown up and lives in one place, I'd be lying, and the book would ring false. So whatever I write - whether it is a literary novel or a thriller - is going to be from the perspective of an immigrant. No matter how long I live in America, I will always be an outsider; I will always see things differently.
And the theme of the outsider works well in a mystery/thriller. The outsider always has a more interesting life: he operates outside the norm and notices things that others do not. He can be both invisible and hyper-visible at the same time.
Are you a regular reader of thrillers? Who are your favorite authors in this genre?
Growing up in India, I read a lot of thrillers and mysteries - that's all I was aware of. So I read Robert Ludlum, John le Carré and Ross MacDonald. Then, when I came to America, I found out that I hadn't read all the American literature that all the other kids had. So for many years I didn't read thrillers, and concentrated on writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
When I went back to reading thrillers about five years ago, I found the genre had changed: cold war banalities had given way to nuanced, highly literary works. I particularly love the mysteries written by Benjamin Black- the pen name of the literary author John Banville. His books combine gorgeous writing with sophisticated plots and are set in 1950s Dublin.
Can you talk about the HarperCollins India initiative to publish a series of mysteries from Indian authors? How did you get involved?
I think I wrote “The Caretaker†at a good time. Publishing houses in India, like HarperCollins, are very sophisticated and after years of publishing foreign authors are looking for more Indian authors. Indian readers have really come of age: they want to see their own experiences reflected in novels. While this has happened in literary fiction, it hasn't really happened in suspense yet.
My book was already written and sold to Minotaur in the U.S.A. when HarperCollins approached me about publishing my book in India. I was thrilled to be the first of the generation of Indian suspense writers. For me to be published in India is a huge honor, and a real homecoming.
What's your view on the thriller genre coming out of India? Is it underrepresented? Has it improved in recent years?
I think Indian writers have been using literary suspense for years as a device without being classified as genre authors - Amitav Ghosh's 1995 “The Calcutta Chromosome†comes to mind.
And there are tons of talented Indian suspense writers out there. In fact, Akashic Books has published two anthologies of noir writing: “Delhi Noir†and “Mumbai Noir,†featuring amazing authors like Allan Sealey, Ruchir Joshi, Tabish Khair, and Sonia Faleiro.
Like the literary novel, Indian suspense authors are going to hit the big time. With its convoluted layers of history, corruption, and larger-than-life criminals, India has so much material to offer.
This book is the first in a trilogy. Can you give us a hint as to what's to come?
The trilogy follows my protagonist, Ranjit Singh, as he tries to find his place in America. Each book explores a different immigrant community.
I just finished writing the second book, “Bollywood Taxi,†and it will be published in 2014. In it, Ranjit is working as a cab driver in New York and is accused of the murder of a famous Bollywood actress who is now living there.
The third book, which I'm currently writing, is “Gandhi Motel.†It's set in a historically Sikh farming community in northern California. Ranjit is running a motel there when he gets involved with a plot involving a white supremacist group.
(The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)
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