Amanat is a creative artist, an author who doesn't quite write the blockbuster, the apprentice architect who doesn't end up making millions, the precocious but precariously ill child, who in the end even loses his childhood sweetheart wife, Sagari. Yet Amanat's errors affect only him and those immediately close to him. Moreover, there is a continuous and always open possibility of redemption and grace in his life, blundering though it may be.

Zia, on the other hand, goes through three avatars of extremism: from Islamic terrorist, to Lucens, a Catholic anti-abortion fundamentalist, to a tantrik-inspired gun runner, Tejas Nirantar. In all of these phases of his life, he kills hundreds of people and destroys innumerable lives. His errors and follies, always buttressed by "faith" in the infallibility of some religious doctrine or the other, always end up in human tragedies of colossal proportions. In Kiran Nagarkar's moral universe, Zia's religious fervour clearly comes under minute scrutiny and is revealed at each step as being pathological.

AUTHORSPEAK: ABHISHEK SINGHVI

Briefly Yours There's one advantage in being a party spokesman, you never run out of things to say. The verbosity is further confounded when the gentleman in question is also a lawyer and a columnist. Candid Corner, Reflections (Universal Law Publishing) is essentially a compilation of Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi's columns in various newspapers. When asked if he ever ran out of words, the 47-year-old Singhvi laughs and says, "Only in front of my wife. That's when I follow the old maxim that discretion is the better part of valour." Given that he is one of the more articulate members of the Congress party, the reflections tend to project an obvious political point of view. "That's not true. My columns cover a wide range of topics and not just politics and law. On controversial issues I have been critical of the Congress policies," he says, and then the lawyer in him takes over as he adds, "but in a positive spirit." Unlike fellow columnist Mani Shankar Aiyar, who once said that he needed a thousand words "just to clear my throat", Singhvi manages to fit his entire thought process within this word-limit. This month the articulate Singhvi has notched two firsts. Not only was his first book released, he was also recently nominated to the Rajya Sabha as an MP for the first time. According to him, "Every briefing is a balancing act. I try not to hit too many sixers. What is more important is to prevent hit wickets." Cricket jargon tends to seep into most of his briefings. It may bewilder the average Congressman, but it works well for the television media. And right down to his colourful choice of shirts and glib sound bytes, Singhvi seems tailor-made for television. He is also the most visual face of the Congress party. The legal background helped him since most political crises tend to have constitutional overtones. Singhvi has been at the forefront of crisis management on issues as diverse as Volkers, Bofors and the recent office of profit controversy. In fact he sees his various hats as a synergy rather than contradictory job descriptions. Interestingly his father L.M. Singhvi, the former high commissioner to the UK was a BJP MP in the Rajya Sabha. But the son's loyalties have always been with the Congress and more specifically with the late Madhavrao Scindia. To borrow from his cricket jargon, there have been few hit wickets in his professional life. As for the sixers, the score card seems to be on the rise. -By Priya Sahgal

Indeed, in the glut of recent Indian English fiction, it is only Nagarkar's latest novel which perhaps invites comparison with Dostoevsky's great work. As in The Brothers Karamazov, the canvas is both large and crowded with brooding and disturbing figures. It is a big book which asks the big questions of our times. Classical theorists of the novel like the Hungarian critic Georg Lukacs considered this above all other literary forms as capable of doing justice to the large social and civilisational issues as the epic did in an earlier age. Nagarkar's novel has the sweep and the ambition to live up to such expectations as the genre of the novel evokes.

Moving with the rapidity of a thriller through three continents, it also explores fundamental psychological and political issues. Not just the nature of religious violence, but the fundamental complexities of the global capitalist world system are tackled head on. Closer home, there is a wonderful evocation of a cosmopolitan and liberal Bombay Muslim family whose younger son, nevertheless, turns into a terrorist.

EXCERPT

One of Zia's earliest memories was of a concert at their home, Firdaus. His aunt Zubeida pushed her chin out in the direction of the dais and said, 'Satan, that's what he is.' Zia was supposed to have been in bed. He could barely keep his eyes open but he was not about to sleep. Abbajaan and Ammi had followed his brother Amanat to stay up all night on the paltry excuse that he was older. Zia would show them. Not only Amanat, but his father, mother and the entire audience of invitees would be dead to the world by three or four in the morning and he would still be keeping vigil.

Nagarkar offers no easy answers or platitudinous hopes. Instead, there is an unrelenting, almost manic questioning and scepticism. This is a book that almost turns irreverence into the only true article of faith. As the protagonist, Kabir, in Amanat's novel, The Arsonist, puts it: "You were about to kill each other for the sake of a god who you claim is either a Muslim or a Hindu. But Inayat, there is only one God and Her name is Life. She is the only one worthy of worship." One of the novel's chief attractions is the manner in which it handles setting. With evocative portraits of Suleiman Mansions in Bhendi Bazaar, Bombay, the bitterly cold mountain fastnesses of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, and breathtaking descriptions of the Trappist Monastery, Terraferra, in the Nevadas, Nagarkar weaves his magical worlds with the dexterity of a master-weaver creating new patterns on his word-loom. There is also a galaxy of memorable characters here, including the fascinatingly devout-demonic Zia, the enigmatic and self-deprecating Amanat, the angel of mercy, child actress Sagari who becomes the guardian of the Khan family, Abbajan, Ammi, Zubeida Khala, Countess Antonia and her daughter Vivian, the Cambrays, the Abbot of the monastery and the Afghan warlord, Nawaaz, and of course, the replitilian Shakta Muni.

Though this is a virtuoso performance, God's Little Soldier is too difficult a novel to be digested easily. Not only is it vast and complex, but also too shifting in both perspective and characterisation. The frenetic pace only partially camouflages an inner panic that the narrative may not quite convince if not cohere. It is also a sad, gloomy, almost despairing book with few light moments that uplift. It is not that the humour of Ravan and Eddie or the sublimity of Cuckold are entirely missing, but here the crisis of faith seems to blight the very narrative impulse.