In Night Theatre a Physician faces life and death when a family of three walks into his rural clinic begging him to save their lives by healing them before the night ends. As the Physician and his assistant skeptically take on the task and race against time, the story of our Physician unfolds and we learn more about what brought him to this rural clinic and gives us new ways to think about life and death and the systems and structures we love in and how they impact path. This novel will will remind you of what is important and give you hope in miracles. There were parts of this book, like the detailed surgery scenes, that felt too long and just drug a bit too long for me but overall I appreciated this story and it’s lessons. Thank you Catapult for the review copy!

A short, strange, intense book written with an accuracy that contrasts well with the fantastical premise. This is one to read if you like weird little books that get you thinking.

I absolutely LOVED this book. Great pacing, great setting, great topic. Really recommend, and definitely will be looking out for more by this author! Thankyou for the free ARC!

Night Theatre by Vikram Paralkar is a literary horror novel set in a clinic in rural India, where the doctor is visited by a family of undead with a strange request : to help them with their wounds so that they can be brought back to life by dawn. It's a pretty dark and interesting tale about death and afterlife. There were parts where it was absolutely creepy and thought provoking. It was dreamlike and had lots of details of surgery which I found really interesting. The only thing I didn't like was how it dragged in some places.
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Really enjoyed this one. It is very fable-esque and I liked how it tackles the expectations placed on medical professionals in a fantastical way

I want to say I enjoyed this but that sounds wrong given the subject matter!!

It was well written and had an almost fable like quality to it which I think was added to with the short length of the book.

I wrote a review of the book for India's weekly magazine Open. Here's the link:
https://openthemagazine.com/lounge/books/trauma-red-tape/

The story takes place in a run-down clinic at the outskirts of a rural Indian village where a once-successful surgeon provides health care to the residents. An untrained pharmacist and her husband assist him in running the clinic. One day the dead visit the clinic. The dead family includes a teacher, his pregnant wife and their son who (acc to them) were stabbed and killed in an attack. However they struck a deal with an angel (an official of the afterlife) to return back to life. But only if their wounds could be operated on by the surgeon. the surgeon has to perform three complex surgeries by dawn to resurrect the dead.

I loved the pacing of the story. It is certainly a page turner and keeps you on your toes. There is magical realism, a macabre beauty and ghostly tones throughout the book. Paralkar being a doctor himself, has given very elaborate descriptions of surgery undertaken on the ghosts. There are meditatons on death and life but they are packed between a gritty, dark, fast moving plot. I loved how real Paralkar's descriptions were — the make-do instruments for the surgery, the bulbs, the concrete ceiling. The chapters leave you wondering about how much the surgeon can achieve in a single night. The novel reads like a fable but alongside the fantastical elements exist the more realistic problems — the lack of trained staff in rural hospitals, corruption, treatment of doctors by patients, ego clashes between doctors.

Read it for excellent writing if you are looking for a pageturner.

Reading Vikram Paralkar's second novel, Night Theater, brings to mind another doctor-writer from another century. Anton Chekhov. This Russian physician and writer gave us well over a hundred fictional doctors in his plays and short stories. With each one, he gave us different memorable archetypes: the narcissist, the genius, the healer, the bumbling idiot, the cynic, and more. And with each one he also gave us richly evocative studies of the medical profession—its many conflicts, rewards, labors, and satisfactions. [Please see the link for the rest of the published review. Thank you.]

I really wanted to like this book, but I didn't connect with it personally and wasn't able to finish it. It's been described elsewhere as a "fable," and I think that holds true. The characters weren't easy for me to sympathize with or understand, in part because of the fable-like qualities of the writing, and I felt detached from what happened to them.

That being said, Vikram Paralkar is a promising writer, and I'm interested to see what he does next.

A doctor, who is the sole practitioner in a struggling rural clinic in India, is faced with three murder victims who claim that they can be restored to life if the doctor treats their wounds by the next morning. It turns out that the doctor doesn’t exactly know all of the rules of this resurrection.

I don’t know quite what to make if this book, but it was well-written, unique and certainly held my interest. It was in turns a satire of a corrupt medical system, a fable and a philosophical exploration of the afterlife and the power of belief. The author is a doctor and he inserted a few too many surgical details for my taste but I would read more by him.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

What a dark, unreal, weird and fascinating story this is. I can't say I liked it, I mean, it is not a nice story, but it utterly fascinated me. Exceptional. Some story. A weird story about a small poor clinic somewhere in India, led by a talented but poor doctor 'with a history'. One day a man and his wife and son enter the clinic. They are officially dead, but sent back from the afterlife by an angel. They died in real life being assaulted and robed. In order to enter into real life again due to the 'courtesy of the angel', the doctor needs to operate them. When the day breaks, they will regain life and the wounds need to be controlled...otherwise they will die. Well... weird story isn't it. And it touches on a lot of topics, religion, what does afterlife look like, are there angels, is there a God, how do you live your life, what are your dilemmas, etc.
Utterly fascinating. I did not care much for the operating scenes I have to say, but the rest of the story, yes, yes, recommended. But you are in for a dark ride I warn you!

Night Theater exposes everything we humans tell ourselves, about what it means to lead a good life, as meaningless. And after that, the novel takes every article of faith that we humans like to believe, about the dignity of humanity, and the possibility of redemption, and smashes it to bits. And then, miraculously, after every virtue is exposed as meaningless, and every hope is smashed to bits, the novel rises up from the ashes and becomes a story that's mythic, and true, and full of hope. It's a short novel packed with deep meaning and I recommend it.

A renowned surgeon falls from grace and struggles to run a low-income clinic at the edge of a city, then one night three visitors come and need his help to come back to live. Interesting mix of medical work-life, gods of India, and a peculiar afterlife, all with a tale that unfolds gradually as the story moves along. The author is a doctor and it shows. So much of the book is revealed as you read, so I can't say a lot.

This book, with its clever title, has a lot going for it. A compelling premise (big city surgeon in rural India gets visited by a family of "walking dead" - corpses who were murdered and sent back to Earth by an angel for a second chance at life) and an authenticity brought about by the fact that the author himself is a research physician (so the many nighttime surgeries feel like the real deal).

It's also simply written, and relatively short - so you can whip through this baby in no time flat.

What I like about this story - which has a fable aura to it, what with the magical realism threaded through its soul - is that it is equal parts spiritual to physical. We find ourselves grappling with the afterlife and an absentee god, just as much as we are looking into a damaged chest cavity and all the tools needed for the repair. And Paralkar does this very well - though sometimes I found the lengthy surgical scenes took me out of the story more than I would have liked.

Perhaps though, it's because of the fable-esque nature of this book that I felt myself at arm's length. I found myself propelled by a morbid curiosity of what would happen when the sun rose the next morning. Would the corpses survive? Would they be granted this second chance at life, and if so, how would that look? But I didn't really know, or connect with the characters on a deeper level. Maybe I wasn't meant to. Maybe this book is meant to be read from the heavens, or from a seat in the nosebleeds in a large theatre - distance is sometimes needed to see the big picture.

I really don't know. But if I'm going to be a spectator, I prefer the front row, myself.

Magic realism has always been my favorite genre. And I requested this book exactly because of that. As I proceeded with the story, I was amazed by the delicate magic realism woven with the harsh reality of rural India. The rural parts of India has always needed more medical facilities. And the mob culture in rural India can't be controlled either. I love the portrayal of rural India more than the magic realism. I recommend this book to all magic realism and multicultural lovers.

We follow a surgeon and his clinic located in a rural village of India, when one evening a family that have been violently murdered presents to the clinic and explains their opportunity at a second chance of life if the surgeon can mend their wounds before the sun rises. Throughout the book we discover how he came to work in the village as well as how this second chance was presented to the murdered family.

I found the backstory of the surgeon to be incredibly interesting which helped with an understanding toward his nature, but I wanted more backstory from the murdered family. It didn't feel in depth enough, whilst what we did receive was very husband-centric and I found myself wanting more dialogue and perspective from the wife. I found the ending slightly abrupt and rushed. It felt a little convenient and marginally rushed.

A book with an intriguing premise, atmospheric prose and well written (especially the surgical scenes).

This book felt more like a parable than a novel, although the plot and the pacing made it as propulsive as any good mystery novel. I think the publisher blurb doesn't do the reader any favors by revealing so much of the plot - I went in knowing only that it was vaguely something about a doctor visited by 'ghosts', so much of the story came as a surprise. There is quite a bit of surgical detail, but it was fascinating, not disturbing - no messy bleeding with these patients! In such a short book there's not a lot of room for character description, but they all came alive for me (even the dead ones). Liked the ending very much. If this author is as good a doctor as he is a writer, his patients should be happy. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you Net Galley. This was not my usual read! I am still processing it but I did find it a compelling read. It was a fascinating mix of horror (a genre I generally eschew), fiction, fantasy and philosophy. Worth a read. Definitely.

This was one weird-woah-what-did-I-just-read book, but in a good way. So we have a surgeon, affectionately known as (Doctor) Saheb, and his two loyal staff – his pharmacist and her repairman husband, who worked at a clinic in a rural village in India. O upne night, they were visited by 3 walking, living corpses – a father, a pregnant mother and a young son. They were humans, just dead, violently murdered by bandits, and they had walked all the way from another district to this village just to see the surgeon. They needed him to save their lives, which the surgeon thought was ridiculous because they were already dead. After the father told him and convinced him of their afterlife story - that they were given a chance to live again by some kind official in the afterlife - the surgeon felt like he was given no choice but to help. And he was given a deadline – he had to ‘save’ them by sunrise. If he failed to do so, the patients would die all over again and stay in the afterlife forever.

The book opened to a very bitter surgeon, seeing his patients without much care, as opposed to his pharmacist who showed to have more grace, compassion and empathy towards the patients, and one could see how loyal she and her husband were towards the surgeon despite his cold treatment towards them. But there was more to Doctor Saheb than what he showed in public. As the story of the living dead unfolded, so did his.

This was such a thought-provoking read.

The surgeon was accused of causing the death of one of his patients and cast out to this remote place. He accepted the job here because he had no other choice. He, who once believed in “Help(ing) those who come to me”, and taking matters in his own hands, now, wasn’t so sure about it anymore after what happened, especially when odds kept stacking against him, one after another – first his job, then the visit from the official, now this. It’s no surprise that he didn’t believe in God.

While on the other hand, the pharmacist, was God-fearing and whose life’s principles was guided by her religion and beliefs, always believed in leaving life in God’s hands, “Whatever happen, let it happen. Why try to change it?” She tried to dissuade the surgeon from changing the fate of the three patients, who were meant to be dead.

On the day before the murder took place, the patients took pity on an old and tired palmist they came across at a village fair and had their palms read, and was told that they'll have long lives. Evidently, the palmist lied and the father hated him for that. Later, we'd find out that the father too, had lied to his family and the surgeon about their afterlife situation, which angered all of them.

But the palmist and the father did what they had to do because they had a chance to save their lives. Was it wrong to do so? Quoting the official who visited the surgeon that day, “It’s that everything about sin lies in how you choose to look at it.” And the question he posed to the surgeon, “…if you find yourself in a position where you have to harm someone to preserve your own life, what would you do?”

And the official, seemed to me, to be the afterlife official in disguise who had come to teach the surgeon a lesson about living and the afterlife, about giving life and taking lives; and the baby from the pregnant lady, in my opinion, was there to give the surgeon a second chance at living his life differently, and to be a little God-fearing, maybe. But then again, if the surgeon heeded the pharmacist’s advice, that was to not interfere with God's will, the baby wouldn’t gave gotten a second chance at life, would she?

Overall, this was a morbid, haunting tale that would stay with me for quite awhile. I think this would make a great Book Club book. But be warned, the surgeries performed were described in detail, hence, not for the squeamish. I skimmed those parts.