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michael5000 's review for:
Q & A
by Vikas Swarup
2012: Very entertaining picaresque adventure novel with a similar concept as the excellent movie "Slumdog Millionaire," but very few other similarities.
Is it a general characteristic of Indian fiction to be episodic -- in this case, a unified collection of short stories -- or is that just the Indian novels I happen to be encountering?
2018: So, I'm sure that I realized in 2012 that Slumdog Millionaire was an adaptation of Q&A. I guess my point was that it was a very free adaptation, keeping the overall framework but substituting in a completely different set of stories. That's a big deal, because Q&A is kind of a modern Canterbury Tales, with an overall story that's really just an excuse to tell a bunch of short tales.
Unusually, although the book is fairly entertaining and came first, it is hard to imagine very many people saying "the book was better than the movie." It isn't really in the same class.
Is it a general characteristic of Indian fiction to be episodic -- in this case, a unified collection of short stories -- or is that just the Indian novels I happen to be encountering?
2018: So, I'm sure that I realized in 2012 that Slumdog Millionaire was an adaptation of Q&A. I guess my point was that it was a very free adaptation, keeping the overall framework but substituting in a completely different set of stories. That's a big deal, because Q&A is kind of a modern Canterbury Tales, with an overall story that's really just an excuse to tell a bunch of short tales.
Unusually, although the book is fairly entertaining and came first, it is hard to imagine very many people saying "the book was better than the movie." It isn't really in the same class.