Hangdog Souls
by Marc Joan
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Apr 01 2021 | Archive Date Nov 01 2022
Description
Kingdom of Mysore, 1799. A guilt-racked British Army deserter tries to win safety for those he loves — but his reckless bargaining only leaves him trapped between destinies, condemned to facilitate centuries of suicide and murder. Death after death, each death diminishes him, until — a quarter of a millennium later — a Keralan astrophysicist has the chance to annul the soldier’s Faustian bargain. But Chandy John is weakened by his own burden of grief. Will this twenty-first century scientist become just another helpless nexus between undeserved death and undeserved life?
Hangdog Souls is set in the Dravidian heartlands of South India — and in a blurred edgeland where alternative realities elide. Through linked narratives of guilt, shame and the search for absolution, this book takes readers from the arid Tamil plains to the highest peaks of the Nilgiris, and from occult horrors in Tipu Sultan’s kingdom to creeping madness in the world of particle physics.
Spanning three hundred years, the stories in Hangdog Souls weave together the fates and fortunes of multiple characters — individuals that echo through the generations, asking always the same question: What weight can balance the death of an innocent?
Available Editions
| ISBN | 9781739708108 |
| PRICE | |
Featured Reviews
Peter B, Reviewer
Hangdog Souls is a set of loosely linked short stories set in India, specifically Mysore and often around the city of Ooty. The stories all all in some way connected to the first, a tale of a British exile hiding, pretending to be Portuguese until the British attack. In this he does a deal with the local leader to move his family and his crop of Eucalyptus Trees to safety - but pays a high price for the deal. Its very well observed and has a creeping horror subtext that plays out into actual horror, and a twist into the supernatural which I didn't expect. The rest of the book broadly doubles down on this twist,
There is a lot to like in Hangdog Souls, but the greatest compliment I can pay it is that it reminded me, particularly in the the more tart stories, of M.R.James. In a lot of these cases people go to unknown places, get embroiled with something strange or mildly spooky (get get to be aware of ranting only people who might be British), and things take a turn. Though for Joan, the devil is replaced by aspects of colonialism, and/or the British, there is also plenty to be said about Dravidian spiritualism. As a collection of shorts it does a good job at throwing characters and archetypes, and in some cases styles at us, sketching historical actors and more contemporary sketches of Indian Middle Class. There is even a proper sci-fi horror here in a search within particle physics which leads to a more cosmic take on the themes of the story.
Hangdog Souls surprised me with how coherent it was both as a collection of shorts, and thematically. There is a question returned to about how you weigh a life, both in saving another, and your own. But there are also some wonderfully choice bits of writing too - the three pages on the preparation of a hangman's rope is delightfully macabre, Well worth a read if the idea of Indian set, century spanning M.R.James tickles your fancy.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
