Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

In rural India, the local doctor, a former surgeon, wearily closes his surgery. Supplies are scarce, hours are long and the work is hard as he is pestered by corrupt officials and beleaguered by the unreliable power supply. But this night is different. When his patients emerge from the darkness they bear the terrible wounds that have killed them in a vicious attack. Unable to understand what is happening, unable to reconcile it with his science, the doctor much repair the damage before sunrise to return the family to life. The deadline suffuses the story with tension and the graphic detail of the procedures gives grim reality to a tale with this original supernatural twist. We learn the price of a corrupt system that can send educated, skilled surgeons to minister in backwaters where their skills are needed but not challenged. Full of musings on religion, inequality and duty, the surgeon's mind wanders while he works desperately to beat the sunrise. A powerful and original fable.

*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


I went into this book knowing very little and expecting a quiet story of a remote village. What I got is one of the most immersive books I've ever read; a book that kept me thinking about it every time I put it down and once I'd finished.

Telling the story of a surgeon in a small village who finds himself having to operate on three victims of a violent attack, this short novel explores so many larger themes - from life and death, to parenthood, morality, professionalism and religion. I don't usually like anything that could be classified as horror or anything containing gore or graphic content. However, the author, who is a doctor himself, described the surgeries in great detail making me feel quite queasy at points but I think that this really helped to bring the story to life.

If you like contemporary stories with a dash of magical realism or horror, I would highly recommend this one. This story will definitely stay with me and I'm glad I ventured out of my comfort zone.

5 out of 5 stars!

This is really something special. The cover is stunning, the story compelling, the world both familiar and strange. If I had one reservation, it would be that everything is laid out in the first few chapters, and after that not much more develops or changes. But it's such a short and enthralling book that I didn't mind so much. Looking forward to more from this author.

This short novel has an irresistible (cover and) setup: late one evening a surgeon in a rural Indian clinic gets a visit from a family of three: a teacher, his pregnant wife and their eight-year-old son. But there’s something different about this trio: they’re dead. They each bear hideous stab wounds from being set upon by bandits while walking home late from a fair. In the afterlife, an angel reluctantly granted them a second chance at life. If the surgeon can repair their gashes before daybreak, and as long as they stay within the village boundaries, their bodies will be revivified at dawn.

Paralkar draws on dreams, folktales and superstition, and the descriptions of medical procedures are vivid, as you would expect given the author’s work as a research physician at the University of Pennsylvania. The double meaning of the word “theatre” in the title encompasses the operating theatre and the dramatic spectacle that is taking place in this clinic. But somehow I never got invested in any of these characters and what might happen to them; the précis is more exciting than the narrative as a whole.

Thankyou to NetGalley, Serpents Tail and the author, Vikram Paralker, for the opportunity to read a digital copy of Night Theatre in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
The storyline was well written and provides a good read.

Matters of life and death... 5 stars

A former surgeon now acts as a general doctor in a small run-down clinic serving a population of rural villagers. His supplies are late when they come at all, his overseer is bullying and corrupt, and his only assistants are a young unqualified woman whom he has taught to act as his pharmacist, and her husband, who does all the handyman tasks around the clinic. Frustrated with the way his life has turned out, the surgeon is in a near perpetual state of disappointment and ill-temper. Then, one night after a long day when he has been giving all the local children their polio vaccinations, he is approached by three very strange patients, each with terrible wounds. They are a husband, wife and young son who were attacked in the street, robbed, stabbed and left to die. Which indeed they did. Now they have been given the chance to return from the afterlife, but before they come alive at dawn the next day, they must have their wounds treated or they will die again...

No, this isn’t some kind of zombie horror story. It’s a beautifully written fable which, while it can be read on one level simply as a unique and interesting story, has layer upon layer of depth, dealing with the big questions of life, death, faith, and the place of medicine in all of these.

None of the characters have names, being known rather as their occupation – the surgeon, the pharmacist, etc. The first hurdle is for the living characters to come to terms with the shock of meeting the dead ones, and to decide whether they should help them. How do they know whether the power that has offered them the chance to live again is on the side of good? The whole question of the unknowableness of God’s plan and of the place of faith in determining how to act underlies every decision the characters are forced to make. The pharmacist is devout, the surgeon is not, but they each have to answer the same questions to find their way through the moral maze that confronts them, and in the end, their humanity is all they have to guide them.

Paralkar is himself a doctor and scientist, so the descriptions of the surgical procedures the surgeon must tackle come over as completely authentic. Although they can be a shade gruesome at times, especially for the squeamish (like me), they’re not done to shock or horrify. Rather, they show the skills we take for granted in our surgeons – the near miracles we expect them to perform, and our readiness to criticise and blame if they fail. The underlying suggestion seems to be that we’re near to a point of refusing to accept death as inevitable, and what does that do to questions of faith?

All this mulling over profound questions came after I’d finished the book, though. While I was reading, I was too engrossed in wanting to know the outcome to pause for thought. There’s a very human story here too, and excellently told. Will the surgeon be able to save them all? If not, who will live and who die? What about the woman’s unborn child – is it included in the promise of new life? If they live, what will the future hold for them and for the surgeon? How will the surgeon explain their existence to the villagers – or explain their corpses if he fails to fix their wounds? How will the experience change him, whatever the outcome?

The ending beautifully answers all the questions that should be answered and leaves open all the ones that shouldn’t. Paralkar has achieved the perfect balance of giving a satisfying and thought-provoking story without telling the reader what to think, and as a result this is one that each reader will make unique to herself. One of the most original novels I’ve read in years, I’ll be mulling over it for a long time and suspect it’s one that would give even more on a second read. It gets my highest recommendation.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Serpent’s Tail.

This book was beautiful. It's partly fable and partly a ghost story. It was very intriguing and atmospheric. I loved the writing.
It's so rich covering a lot of topics like religion, power and more.
I'm really glad I read it. I shall seek for other books by this author.
Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Saramago meets ER

In a tiny Indian village, a surgeon is visited by a murdered family who insist that he patch their wounds by sunup, so they can be resurrected.
This Saramago-esque fable is very contained: the only setting is the tiny clinic, the timeframe just a single night, and the (unnamed) characters limited to the doctor, his assistant and her husband, the murdered family of three and one corrupt government official whose sudden appearance nearly derails everything. It’s almost a stage play in book form.
Night Theatre was originally published in India under the title “The Wounds of the Dead”. The family’s wounds are not just physical. They are traumatised by the acts of violence that killed them and bewildered by the afterlife they’ve glimpsed. It’s not what they expected to say the least, and they’d rather return to the land of the living.
The surgeon is working to a deadline: he must perform three complicated surgeries by sunrise. If he fails to repair their fatal wounds, his patients will bleed to death all over again. The clock is ticking which makes for a suspenseful read. Paralkar is an M.D. and the surgical scenes are written in lurid detail – presumably medically accurate, apart from the patients being dead, although I’m not qualified to judge.
Over the course of the night, we discover why this skilled surgeon has been relegated to a thankless post in the middle of nowhere, and what really happened to the ghost family. The book touches on religious faith, inequality, corruption and more, without making any obvious point. The characters are lightly sketched, but that suits the fable/dream tone. 3.5 stars.

The day the dead visited the surgeon, the air in his clinic was laced with formaldehyde. His pharmacist had poured some into a beaker in the operating room and given it a night to scour every corner.”


The surgeon, Doctor Saheb, is a general Doctor in a small rural village in India. The surgery struggles for supplies but he does his absolute best for his patients.

He often uses his own money to pay for supplies which have have disappeared, taken by the corrupt and only returned on payment of a fee.

One night he is visited by a family, a man, his pregnant wife and their son, they have terrible wounds, but no bleeding as they are already dead.

Their story is incredible and their need for help obvious and so urgent. The surgeon spends many hours trying to mend these broken people and he listens to tale of an angel and hope.

This feels like a supernatural gothic ghost tale, but its not really as its so down to earth with the descriptions of surgery and the wounds, but then has the dead, walking and talking.

However, the family and their wounds are not all that they seem, but I won’t say anymore as I wouldn't want to spoil this wonderfully odd tale.

This is a cleverly written book with a lot of surgery details that are not for the squeamish, I think it shows the pressures doctors and surgeons are under and how we expect miracles of them every day. A thought provoking read...


I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review

When I requested this book, I wasn’t certain what I was in for and as I started reading after being approved, I still didn’t know what I was in for. That says a lot, doesn’t it? I mean, throughout the addictive book, I was left wondering if it is medical fiction or if it’s magical realism? Whether the incident happening was real or just someone’s nightmare?

There is a tiny village somewhere in India (from what I gathered, it might have been set in Maharashtra seeing as the people spoke Marathi), there’s a village doctor whose clinic is seriously underfunded, understaffed and just in desperate need of some quality equipment to better help the villagers that come to him with various maladies and tragedies. The doctor, a surgeon, has only a trained but not quite educated pharmacist and her eager to help husband. The doctor has been making do with what he has, often paying out of his pockets for the unending need for supplies. The villagers think of him as a saint, someone who they know has left behind private hospitals with their latest technology to help them.

One night after having a proper row with the government official during the day about the lack of polio drops for a polio drive, he is then asked by a family to perform surgery on them in order to save their lives. The odd thing is that they aren’t alive to begin with. The story of that one night, in trying to save the family, in trying to understand what happened to the family, changes the doctor and his assistants for years to come.

I strayed from my normal review format because this book was just so very different from what I read and it also can’t quite be called literary fiction despite its very convicing writing and characters and plot.

So, let’s start with writing. This was my first Vikram Paralkar book and I am in love with the way Paralkar writes. It’s engaging and I literally wasn’t able to put the book down even though I had some very important chores. Then there’s his medical background which comes into play quite stunningly. He uses his knowledge and doesn’t try to shy away from the slightly horrifying parts of the job so even though I sometimes cringed, I admired that bit a lot.

The characters themselves were so freaking grey morally that I absolutely loved it, no one person was completely good or bad, they were always trying to find their balance and not quite succeeding in it. The fact that none of them has a name, has no bearing in how the story works because it just gives us more to work with.

At its core, this is a story of hope and how it can make or break lives. The doctor has lost all hope of ever getting enough funding to get the villagers the care they need, the young couple helping the doctor are still hopeful enough in their life that they hope they will be happy and with a child soon. The dead family has their own sense of desperate hope and witnessing the rise and fall of their hopes is quite the journey. I thought I knew what the author wanted us to see near the end but then the ending made me rethink the whole thing again. Isn’t that how hope works anyway?

Overall, I would absolutely recommend it to those who want to read something different, something not quite paranormal but just weird enough to warrant the inclusion in the genre. Mind you, there’s quite a lot of details about various medical procedures and if you are easily spooked by that then think twice before picking it up. Night Theatre releases on 21st February, 2019 and will be available wherever books are sold.

For a story that is heavily steeped in mysticism and belief, this was one of the most realistic depictions of medical practitioners I've ever seen: exhausted, burnt out, full of self doubt, at the end of their tether... and yet still continuing to assist those in need.

The story was intriguing and engrossing. I couldn't put it down.

An intriguing tale that combines magical realism with harsh grit and grime, blood and sweat. A sobering story about why we need doctors and how little many of us appreciate their work. I found the story powerful but the writing workmanlike; this is a good concept that could have used better execution.

This is a beautifully written book with more depth than is perhaps apparent at first site.

The surgeon is a general Doctor in a small rural village in India. He is over qualified for this position but generally does his best for the people. He often puts his own money forward to pay for supplies which have have disappeared into the ether of corruption and palm greasing that appears common. One night he is visited by an extraordinary family; a man, his pregnant wife and their son. Their story seems incredible and their need for help obvious and urgent. We follow the surgeon, his pharmacist and this family through this unbelievable night.

On the surface this seems to be almost a fairy tale. I can’t give too much description as I don’t want to give away spoilers. Suffice to say the family and their wounds are not all that they seem and they have not travelled to the surgeon via normal means.

However there is much more depth to this book. We learn about the surgeon and why he is working in this village. How does he feel about his work and the corruption which abounds in the bureaucracy of the medical service? We learn about his beliefs and ambitions. We alsoread about the pharmacist and her husband who are more religious than the surgeon but battle their own pain of childlessness. Then there is the family. How exactly did they get here? Are their stories of death and the after life true and what does it mean for the beliefs of the characters?

This is a really beautifully written book with elegant prose. I will warn you that there is considerable detail concerning the surgery which some readers may not like. This intricate detail can be found throughout the book from the movement of cockroaches to the cracks on the tiles. I found that this intricate detail was a vital part of the book and understanding the surgeon.

There are lots of elements in this book. This is a ghost story but not a traditional English gothic style ghost story. It is also a book about searching inside yourself and discovering who you are and what you want. Definitely a thought provoking book.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

A beautifully crafted fable. Night Theatre takes the reader through one night with the surgeon of a remote village clinic in India, as a family of 3 arrive fatally wounded at his clinic.

According to the ‘angel’ who has spoken to them, this surgeon is the one who must repair their wounds before dawn if they are to live again. They breathe, but have no pain, and do not bleed. Can the surgeon save them and their unborn child?

Partly fable, partly ghost story, this short and clever tale covers religion, reincarnation, power, and the imagery of darkness and light. Eloquently written; I shall remember this read.

In a run-down clinic at the outskirts of a rural Indian village, a once-successful surgeon is bringing what remains of his career to an unassuming end. Saheb, as the villagers respectfully call him, tries to do his job decently, despite lack of facilities, a sorely limited budget, stifling bureaucracy and institutionalised corruption. As for assistance, he must make do with an untrained pharmacist and her handyman husband. But he is soon to face his biggest challenge yet. One night, a young family – father, pregnant mother and infant son – present themselves at the clinic, suffering from horrific injuries inflicted by a band of bandits. It was a savage attack and no one could possibly survive the wounds they show the doctor. In fact, the would-be patients are dead, allowed to return to Earth by a friendly official of the afterlife. There’s one problem though – at dawn, blood will once again course through their veins. In the course of one long night, the doctor must successfully complete three complex surgeries, not to save the living, but to resurrect the dead.

The dead tend to haunt ghost stories and horror fiction. Vikram Paralkar’s Night Theatre (originally published in India as The Wounds of the Dead) is neither of the two. Its horrors, if any, lie in the detailed surgical descriptions (Paralkar is a hematologist-oncologist and, presumably, speaks from experience) and in the quasi-existential sense of futility instilled by the evident moral failure of society. If pressed to classify the novel, I would describe it as a work of magical realism. Indeed, despite its fantastical premise, it feels strangely plausible, its plot driven forward by an inherent logic. By a happy irony, Paralkar manages to use a surreal tale as a vehicle social critique. At the same time, the otherworldly elements provide a springboard for ruminations about death and the meaning of life.

I must say that the book’s blurb intrigued me, but little did I expect to discover a little literary gem. By turns tragic, darkly comic and ultimately moving, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and can’t recommend it enough.

Night Theatre is an interesting and captivating read. I am calling it literary fiction, but you could also go with magical realism, given the things that happen within the tale. Paralkar's prose drew me in right away, and left me keen to see what would befall this village doctor in the dead of night. The surgeries he performs are described in great detail, so this book may not be for the squeamish. Then there is some discussion of the afterlife and what is an unjustified or unfair death. However, the story also looks at the role of the doctor, and the difficulties this particular man has faced that led him to be in the village. I can't say more without risking spoilers, but all in all Night Theatre is a well-written book with an intriguing premise that will certainly leave you thinking.