DREAMS OF RIVERS AND SEAS

'For some time now, I have been plagued, perhaps blessed, by dreams ofrivers and seas, dreams of water'. Just days after Albert James writesthese lines to his son, John, in London, he is dead. Abandoning a prettygirlfriend and the lab where he is completing his PhD, John flies to Delhito join his mother in mourning. A brilliant and controversialanthropologist, the nature of Albert James' research, and thecircumstances of his death, are far from clear. On top of this, John mustconfront his mother's coolness, and the strangeness of the cremationceremony that she has organized for his father. No sooner is the bodyconsigned to the flames than a journalist arrives, determined to write abiography of the dead man. The widow will have nothing to do with theproject, yet seems incapable of keeping away from the journalist.In TimParks' masterly new novel, "India", with its vast strangeness, the densityand intensity of its street life, its indifference to all distinctionsbetween the religious and the secular, is a constant source of distractionto these westerners in search of clarity and identity. To John, the enigmaof his father's dreams of rivers and seas appears to be one with thegreater mystery of the country.