Sep 20

Sep 20 Age of Vice

Author: Deepti Kapoor
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.

New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.

Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.

In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family’s ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters’ connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?

Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.

TL;DR Review

Age of Vice is a super-readable literary crime novel set in India. While I didn’t love it as much as some others (crime isn’t my genre), I definitely read it quickly and enjoyed it.

For you if: You like gangster movies like The Sopranos or The Godfather (but this time, make the story written by a woman!).

Full Review

First, big thanks to Riverhead for sending me an advanced copy of this book — it comes out in January, and the amount of early hype that’s being built around it tells you just how successful they think it’s going to be. I’m inclined to agree with them — Age of Vice is a super-bingeable, decadent, brutal read.

This book is set mostly in Delhi, India in the early 2000s. The story revolves around the Wadias, a powerful gangster family who run pretty much everything. We have three main characters: Ajay, who ends up working for them; Sunny, son of the patriarch; and Neda, a journalist who gets herself very personally involved. There’s a deadly car crash at the beginning, and we flash back and forth to not only learn what happened but also see how it shaped what will come next for these characters.

A couple things to know about this book: First, it’s book one of a planned trilogy, which I didn't know until later, but was very glad to hear after I finished it. Second, this kind of crime novel set in India and written a woman is a rare thing, and the kind of attention this book is getting is an excellent, boundary-pushing thing. We love to see it, and it’s well-deserved.

While I don’t think I fell quite as head over heels for this one as much as some other early reviewers — simply because this kind of antihero crime fiction is not my genre; I don’t really like things like The Sopranos or The Godfather — I did really like it, and I did read it very quickly. To me, the three main characters make the book especially notable; they are beautifully, exceptionally morally gray. Some of them are better people than others, and their degree of goodness changes wonderfully over the course of the novel, but Kapoor has made sure that we always at least nugget of sympathy for all three of them.

I’m eager for more readers to get their hands on this book and to see what they think, and I’m definitely looking forward to book two!