A sinister curse on the House of Loya which is a rich Marwadi family from Calcutta pretty much ends the lives of many of the family members who are too busy either having affairs, getting into shady arms deals, controlling the government and finally ending up losing their near and dear to death one way or another.
Too many characters so I do not remember who did what except that there was a character called Amba who controls the situation for quite a bit. There are real life settings in the time periods which involve people in the Government, known names so we can relate to them, arms deals which is a known story, lots of research well woven into the narrative. But then the story is mostly told and not shown so I kind of skimmed through it all and got to the end which is nothing to look forward to. One wonders who the protagonist is, what his motive was, how he achieves it or dies in its pursuit. However it does paint a picture of the decadence of the rich families, the Jews of India as the blurb says. There's no doubting Neelima's storytelling abilities with complex, hard plots nor her penchant to tell the truth however ugly - I only wish she had been more patient in developing it some more.
Interestingly she has written several other books which sound interesting -I already have 'Father Dearest' - am looking forward to reading it next.
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