The Great Indian Bust: A Coming of Age Fiction – Review

Rishabh Bhatnagar’s novel The Great Indian Bust: A Coming of Age Fiction was read by our blogger Akash recently and he has offered his review and opinions about the experience with this emerging novelist’s attempt at writing a personal, subjective and yet effective piece of fiction. You can read the review below and also find the link to buy this novel from Amazon at the end of the review. We hope you will enjoy it.

This is the recent development that I am tracing. The Great Indian Bust: A Coming of Age Fiction suffix added to it proves that the author is not keeping his readers under any false impressions. He has given it out outrightly that his novel is about someone growing – in the terms of age as well as in the domain of intellect and understanding. So, the first point scored by Rishabh at the very first impression. Well, let me introduce you to the guy himself – Rishabh Bhatnagar, the novelist, is a young law student and he wants to write ‘different’ and he has done it, to a very great extent.

In terms of content, the novel is simple, easy to understand and very easy to read and even easier to enjoy. You should not have any difficulties getting the numbers right on a jumbled number box. There are no elements of secrecy or hidden agendas in the work. It is about the life of a young man named Sidhartha who represents the author himself and a large part of the novel matches with the life of Rishabh himself. So, you can even call it a partial autobiography and it would not be wrong.

There is a very simple and like a straight line plot in the novel and the major program is to trace the development of life around and inside the protagonist. However, within this limited scenario, there are instances that will give the readers their chance to laugh, think and even get angry and sad. Well, who might not want this? Complex things are rather kept out of the plot and there is no place for crooked impressions because the author wants to offer the readers something to keep them out of ‘worries and life’s boredom’. He might have succeeded as well!

About his childhood, about his younger friends, about his school life, about his coaching classes, about his scooter, about his friends smoking around him, the abuses… you will find many things in the novel that may relate to anyone’s early days… the novel is simple and its simplicity is the thing that can make the readers a part of it. This is something to be appreciated. However, there are also some low points in the novel. In fact, the biggest absence is of an agenda that binds your things together. There is nothing of that sort offered in The Great Indian Bust and this will haunt some of the readers because they will spend a few important hours of their lives wrestling with this text… However, if you are a serious reader, you can wrest what you want out of any text!

Get a copy of this ‘different’ piece of fiction from Amazon India in Kindle version and read it out to find your things yourself. I am rating it 3.3/5 and I am sure I am doing justice with my critique as well as the novelist’s attempt. Get a copy here:

buy the novel – Amazon India

review by Akash for The Book Blog

(NOTE: Many of the best book review websites in India have also rated this novel very favourably. The work is indeed different and it does succeed in creating a different domain around it. So, you should read it before you judge it by the impressions. All the best!)