Night Theater: A Novel
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"A literary page-turner, Paralkar’s Night Theater is an engaging exploration of life, death, and the afterlife. The novel follows a jaded, washed-up surgeon in rural India—understaffed, undersupplied, and overly cynical. Late one night, a young family, recently murdered yet somehow walking and talking, visits his clinic telling the surgeon that they can have a second chance at life only if he is able to repair their wounds that night before they are fully reanimated. What follows is a tautly paced, at turns gruesomely humorous, fable-like novel that almost feels like a wonderfully remixed version of A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life but with emergency surgery on the walking dead. Insightful, philosophical, and endlessly readable, I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent in Vikram Paralkar’s dimly lit, roach-infested clinic." —Caleb Masters, Bookmarks (Winston-Salem, NC)
"What do I really know about surgeons? Only what I’ve picked up from Doctor Strange, profiles of Atul Gawande, and TV medical shows. With that as reference, I would expect a generic surgeon to be egotistical, exactingly meticulous, and contemplative about mortality. Vikram Paralkar uses these archetypal qualities as the building blocks of a rich tale of the limits of human knowledge, skill, and mettle. Told with a remarkable economy, Night Theater takes a supernatural, Gothic premise and plays it out with the kind of calm, procedural manner that is r
Vikram Paralkar
Vikram Paralkar was born and raised in Mumbai, and now lives in Philadelphia in the United States. He works as a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he treats patients with leukaemia and conducts research into the genetic mutations responsible for the illness.
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Reviews for Night Theater
59 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A bitter, misanthropic doctor, exiled in disgrace to a government-run clinic in a small village, deals with a corrupt and frustrating bureaucracy both in this world and in the afterlife. Very bleak and existential, with a glimmer of hope, but nowhere near the bright ending of “a greater understanding of life's miracles” that the book description led me to believe.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This was for my reading group and TG it was short. I have no idea what it was about or what it was attempting to do. It's just bizarre. I would classify this as magical realism and I am just not a fan.Other people in the group seemed to enjoy it a lot more than me, although I was not the only one who was HUH?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very compelling story of an embittered cynical Indian surgeon who was falsely accused of substandard care and bribery and forced out of his city academic job. He works in a poor village clinic for several years dealing with terrible working conditions and poverty then one night a murdered dead family arrives begging him to operate on their wounds before dawn to save them. At dawn their blood will return and without surgical repair of their wounds, they will die again and return to the afterlife (depicted like purgatory). In a riveting macabre scene, the surgeon repairs their dead cadaver like bodies. The end is surprising, bittersweet but tinged with hope. Not an uplifting tale, but well written and fascinating.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/54.5 stars. After taking a while to get started, this scathing critique of bureaucracy and paean to the power of human compassion had me completely. Too short though, I want to know more about the mechanics of the afterlife!
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5We didn’t read it . It came up on it’s on and interrupted the book I was listening to.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In a run-down clinic at the outskirts of a rural Indian village, a once-successful surgeon is bringing what remains of his career to an unassuming end. Saheb, as the villagers respectfully call him, tries to do his job decently, despite lack of facilities, a sorely limited budget, stifling bureaucracy and institutionalised corruption. As for assistance, he must make do with an untrained pharmacist and her handyman husband. But he is soon to face his biggest challenge yet. One night, a young family – father, pregnant mother and infant son – present themselves at the clinic, suffering from horrific injuries inflicted by a band of bandits. It was a savage attack and no one could possibly survive the wounds they show the doctor. In fact, the would-be patients are dead, allowed to return to Earth by a friendly official of the afterlife. There’s one problem though – at dawn, blood will once again course through their veins. In the course of one long night, the doctor must successfully complete three complex surgeries, not to save the living, but to resurrect the dead.
The dead tend to haunt ghost stories and horror fiction. Vikram Paralkar’s Night Theatre (originally published in India as The Wounds of the Dead) is neither of the two. Its horrors, if any, lie in the detailed surgical descriptions (Paralkar is a hematologist-oncologist and, presumably, speaks from experience) and in the quasi-existential sense of futility instilled by the evident moral failure of society. If pressed to classify the novel, I would describe it as a work of magical realism. Indeed, despite its fantastical premise, it feels strangely plausible, its plot driven forward by an inherent logic. By a happy irony, Paralkar manages to use a surreal tale as a vehicle for social critique. At the same time, the otherworldly elements provide a springboard for ruminations about death and the meaning of life.
I must say that the book’s blurb intrigued me, but little did I expect to discover a little literary gem. By turns tragic, darkly comic and ultimately moving, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and can’t recommend it enough. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A man, his wife, and their son show up at the very underfunded clinic run by a surgeon and a helper. They have wounds, but surprise, they're not bleeding, because they're dead! Walking, talking, dead. Sounds interesting, right? The author is a physician himself, and I suspect this book came to be because he had some philosophical thoughts about life and decided to craft a novel around them. If you removed the meandering thought exercises and fable-like stories, this 208 page, simply written book would probably become novella length. Other than the surgeon, none of the characters even have names, and the story feels similarly distant. It has a simple plot and very little character development. It's not engaging and the interesting premise is the best part of this book despite not being executed particularly well.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"The day the dead visited the surgeon, the air in his clinic was laced with formaldehyde."A doctor works in an isolated and decrepit village clinic in India, assisted by a young woman known as the Pharmacist. One evening, a man, his very pregnant wife, and their young son arrive at the clinic. The doctor sees that they have been brutally wounded, the wife beneath the scarf around her neck has been nearly decapitated, yet there is no blood. The tell the doctor a strange tale of their having been murdered, and miraculously in the afterlife having been given a second chance. They have been returned to the world, and if the doctor can repair their wounds before dawn they will be allowed to live again. As the doctor works through the night, we learn the stories of the doctor and of the family he is trying to save.Despite its somewhat mystical premise, this is a realistic and powerful novel. Told in a simple, straight-forward, even scientific manner, it nevertheless raises philosophical and moral issues, and moves us to an ambiguous ending. I loved it.4 stars