Night of Happiness by Tabish Khair

Category: Fiction
Publisher (English): Pan Macmillan India
Publisher (Italian): Tunue Publications

Pragmatic entrepreneur Anil Mehrotra has set up his thriving business empire with the help of his lieutenant, Ahmed, an older man who is different in more ways than one. Quiet and undemanding, Ahmed talks in aphorisms, bothers no one, and always gets the job done. But when one stormy night, Mehrotra discovers an aspect to Ahmed that defies all reason, he is forced to find out more about his trusted aide.

As layers and layers of Ahmed’s history are peeled off, Mehrotra, finds himself confronting some deeply unsettling questions. Does Ahmed really have a wife? Does he keep her imprisoned in their flat? Is Ahmed deranged, or is he just making desperate sense of the horrors that afflicted him in the past ?

By turns poetic, chilling and heartbreaking, Night of Happiness is an unforgettable novel about the painful ironies of a world without tolerance.

The author: Tabish Khair