Age of Vice

Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, Oprah Daily and NPR!

“Dazzling…Finally free from the book’s grip, now all I want to do is get others hooked.”— The Washington Post

“A page-turning social novel…It stirs the pulse while digging into the entrenched and evolving structures and contradictions of modern India.” —NPR

“Cinematic…As a storyteller, Kapoor is a natural.”—The New York Times
 
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.Praise for Age of Vice: 

“Aspiring novelists should read [Age of Vice]. The narrative is clean and lean, the story unputdownable. Every word counts. This is how it’s done when it’s done exactly right.”—Stephen King

“Questions of guilt, complicity, idealism and disillusion arise as the story moves into the glamorous milieu of penthouse apartments and fortified rural compounds… Ms. Kapoor effortlessly changes settings from Delhi markets to prisons to remote forests on the Nepalese border to the beaches of Goa, and she’s equally comfortable writing about servants, politicians and assassins…Recommended.”—Wall Street Journal

“Dazzling…For days, I was torn between gorging on Age of Vice or rationing out the chapters to make them last. Finally free from the book’s grip, now all I want to do is get others hooked…. This is a rare case of a book bounding as high as its hype.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“A luxe thriller, set in New Delhi, that rides the line between commercial and literary fiction so adroitly …The book has echoes of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather,” in terms of its mobbed-up apex predators, and Vikas Swarup’s “Q & A,” the 2005 novel that was the basis for Danny Boyle’s film “Slumdog Millionaire….It’s easy to see why attention has been paid. As a storyteller, Kapoor is a natural. ”—The New York Times

“A page-turning social novel…It stirs the pulse while digging into the entrenched and evolving structures and contradictions of modern India.” —NPR, “Books We Love in 2023”

“Kapoor’s sprawling thriller portrays contemporary India with mesmerizing complexity.”—Oprah Daily, “Best Novels of 2023”

“A complex mandala of a novel, Age of Vice contains stories within stories…Kapoor’s writing is muscular, pithy and highly visual, and the sort fans have come to expect from crime heavyweights like Vikram Chandra and Suketu Mehta, but her sensibility— watchful, probing, contemplative—remains uniquely her own.”—Chicago Review of Books

“Impossible to put down; Kapoor is the real thing.” —Library Journal, STARRED review

“Riveting…Kapoor paints a mesmerizing picture of violence and decadence, of struggle and hope, of corruption and redemption…[I]mpossible to put down.”—BookPage, STARRED review

“Kapoor spins a dizzying ride. Weaving the backstories of Ajay, Neha, and Sunny together, Kapoor’s frenetic and colorful novel highlights the new global pecking order… But as this gripping tale shows, even the weakest deserve one last gasp of dignity.” —Booklist, STARRED review

“Deeply addictive; this spellbinder would be easy to devour in one big gulp, but it’s worth savoring for Neda’s uncompromising take on what she terms India’s ‘losing age, the age of vice.’ The author possesses a talent great enough to match the massive scope of her subject.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

“A complex, gasp-inducing drama that accelerates to an explosive ending. Block out some time: You won’t be able to put this one down.” —GoodHousekeeping

“It doesn’t take long for the reader to become invested in the Mario Puzo–esque drama of the Wadia family and their associates…A whole lot of fun.” —Kirkus

“This book. This epic, crazy, shocking, mind-blowing, brutal, tender, heartbreaking book is one of the best I’ve read.” —Marlon James, Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of Moon Witch, Spider King
 
“Sensationally good — huge, epic, immersive and absorbing … certain to be a book of the year.” —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series
 
“This is a masterpiece. Age of Vice is epic but intimate, its glittering, sharp scenes building into an astonishing geometry. It is an unforgettable story of corruption and excess, of ruthless power and the will to fight back.”—Flynn Berry, New York Times bestselling author of Northern Spy
 
“Age of Vice is a good old-fashioned gangster story, impossible to put down. It’s a novel garlanded with Shakespearean flourishes—star-crossed lovers, secret identities, complicated conspiracies—exploring timeless questions of family, loyalty, and fate.”—Rumaan Alam, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.Deepti Kapoor grew up in northern India and worked for several years as a journalist in New Delhi. The author of the novel Bad Character, she now lives in Portugal with her husband.

1. An epic, action-packed, multicharacter drama, Age of Vice has been described as a family saga, a crime thriller, and even a twisted, forbidden romance. Its characters include crime bosses and servants, politicians and journalists, friends and lovers, and dysfunctional families; the plot offers violence and betrayal, as well as tenderness, heartache, and hope. How would you characterize it as a novel? If you were recommending it to a friend, what would you compare it to?

2. At the center of the novel is the astonishingly wealthy, dangerously corrupt Wadia family, whose elaborate web lures and entraps multiple characters. Theirs is a world where money buys pleasure, power, and loyalty—but what that loyalty is expected to look like differs depending on the person. Consider some of the different ways that loyalties are tested and proven, and how the outcomes vary. (Compare, for instance, the post-crash outcomes for each of the characters involved.)

3. Consider the novel’s three main characters: Ajay, a servant born into poverty; Neda, an upper-caste, educated woman; and Sunny, the playboy son of a crime family. How do their worlds, rules, and expectations differ and intersect? What do these characters illustrate about the different social realms of India? How are they each changed when their fates become intertwined? Which world were you most interested in and why?

4. Over the course of the novel, we follow Ajay through his formative years and witness his transformation from poor, young servant boy to a “Wadia man.” What does it mean to be a Wadia man? Did his transformation surprise you? What does Ajay gain through this process and what does he lose? What can you conclude about the possibility or impossibility of changing one’s destiny?

5. Neda is a fledgling investigative journalist, torn between the allures of luxury and her increasing awareness of the social injustice around her. From where does Neda derive her values? How do they change? How are her assumptions and expectations different from Sunny’s?

6. As the son of the undeniably successful (if also plainly corrupt) Bunty Wadia, Sunny is a pleasure-seeking socialite who is accustomed to getting what he wants, yet struggles with his conflicting desire to simultaneously impress his father and step out from within his shadow. How does his relationship with Neda complicate those desires?

7. From the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the mountains of the Himalayas, the beaches of Goa, and the bustle of New Delhi, readers are offered a broad window on the culture and landscape of contemporary India. What surprised you about the portrayal of these microcosms, or about the relationship between urban and rural life? What role does the change of setting play in the characters’ story arcs?

8. By playing with point of view and jumps in time, Kapoor changes our understanding of the characters she has introduced us to. What is achieved by beginning the novel with Ajay’s car accident as opposed to his origin story? Why start the novel with Ajay and not Neda or Sunny? How did your initial views change over the course of the book?

9. Further complicating the power dynamics at play in the novel is the notion of the Indian caste system, in which status is endowed by birth. Consider the scene in which we first meet Ajay (“not a rich man at all, rather a facsimile, a man dressed in the imitation of wealth”), compared to our introduction to Sunny (“young, rich, and glamorous . . . for whom authenticity is not a question”). What role do birth/caste, inheritance, and social capital play in determining one’s “wealth” in the novel? Is there an American equivalent to all of this?

New Delhi, 2004

Five pavement-dwellers lie dead at the side of Delhi’s Inner Ring Road.
It sounds like the start of a sick joke.
If it is, no one told them.
They die where they slept.
Almost.
Their bodies have been dragged ten meters by the speeding Mercedes that jumped the curb and cut them down.
It’s February. Three a.m. Six degrees.
Fifteen million souls curl up in sleep.
A pale fog of sulfur lines the streets.
And one of the dead, Ragini, was eighteen years old. She was five months pregnant at the time. Her husband, Rajesh, twenty-three, was sleeping by her side. Both belly-up, tucked in with heavy shawls at the crown and feet, looking like corpses anyway save the telltale signs, the rucksack beneath the head, the sandals lined up neatly beside the arms.
  A cruel twist of fate: this couple arrived in Delhi only yesterday. Taking refuge with Krishna, Iyaad, and Chotu, three migrant laborers from the same district in Uttar Pradesh. Each day these men woke before dawn to trek to the labor mandi at Company Bagh, trying to grab whatever daily wage they could find–dhaba cook, wedding waiter, construction laborer–sending money back to their village, paying for a sister’s shaadi, a brother’s schooling, a father’s nightly medicine. Living day to day, hour to hour, the working poor, struggling to survive. Returning to sleep in this barren spot after dark, beside the Ring Road, close to Nigambodh Ghat. Close to the demolished slums of the Yamuna Pushta that had been their home.
  But the newspapers don’t dwell on these three men. Their names vanish at dawn with the stars.

A police van with four cops inside arrives at the crash site. They climb out and see the dead bodies, and the wailing, angry crowd that now surrounds the car. There’s someone still inside! A young man, sitting bolt upright, arms braced at the wheel, eyes shut tightly. Is he dead? Did he die like that? The cops push the rabble aside and peer in. “Is he sleeping?” one cop says to his colleagues. These words cause the driver to turn his head and, like some monster, open his eyes. The cop looks back and almost jumps in fright. There’s something grotesque about the driver’s smooth, handsome face. His eyes are leering and wild, but other than that, there’s not a hair out of place. The cops pull open the door, wave their lathis thunderously, order him out. There’s an empty bottle of Black Label at his feet. He’s a lean man, gym honed, wearing a gray gabardine safari suit, hair parted millimeter fine, impeccably oiled. Beneath the reek of whisky there’s another scent: Davidoff Cool Water, not that these cops know.
  What they know is this: he’s not a rich man, not a rich man at all, rather a facsimile, a man dressed in the intimation of wealth: in its service. The clothes, the well-groomed features, the car, they cannot hide the essential poverty of his birth; its smell is stronger than any liquor or cologne.
Yes, he’s a servant, a chauffeur, a driver, a “boy.”
A well-fed and housebroken version of what lies dead on the road.
And this is not his Mercedes.
Which means he can be hurt.

* * * 
He sobs in oblivion as the cops drag him out. Bent double, he vomits on his own loafers. One cop hits him with his lathi, hauls him up. Another searches his body, finds his wallet, finds an empty shoulder holster, finds a matchbook from a hotel called the Palace Grande, finds a money clip holding twenty thousand rupees.
Whose car is this?
Where did the money come from?
Who did you steal it from?
Thought you’d go for a joyride?
Whose liquor is it?
Chutiya, where’s the gun?
Fucker, who do you work for?
In his wallet there’s an election card, a driver’s license, three hundred rupees. His cards say he is Ajay. His father’s name is Hari. He was born January 1, 1982.
And the Mercedes? It is registered to one Gautam Rathore.
The cops confer: the name sounds familiar. And the address–Aurangzeb Road–speaks for itself. Only the rich and the powerful live there.
“Chutiya,” an officer barks, holding up the car’s papers. “Is this your boss?”
But this young man called Ajay is too drunk to speak.
“Asshole, did you take his car?”
  One of the cops walks to the side and looks down at the dead. The girl’s eyes are open, skin already blue in the cold. She is bleeding from the space between her legs, where life has been.

In the station Ajay is stripped and left naked in a cold and windowless room. He’s so drunk he passes out. The constables return to throw icy water over him and he wakes with a scream. He is seated, and they press his shoulders against the wall, pull his legs apart. A female constable stands on his thighs until his circulation goes and he roars in pain and passes out once more.

  * * *
By the next day the case has gained traction. The media is appalled. At first it’s about the pregnant girl. News channels mourn her. But she was neither photogenic nor full of promise. So the focus shifts to the killer. A source confirms the car is a Mercedes registered to Gautam Rathore, and this is news–he’s a fixture of the Delhi social scene, a polo player, a raconteur, and a prince, genuine royalty, the first and only son of a member of Parliament, Maharaja Prasad Singh Rathore. Was Gautam Rathore driving? That’s the question on everyone’s lips. But no, no, his alibi is watertight. He was holidaying away from Delhi last night. He was at a fort palace hotel near Jaipur. His current location is unknown. But he has released a statement expressing his horror, sending his condolences to the deceased and their kin. The driver, his statement reveals, only recently began working for him. He seems to have taken the Mercedes without Gautam’s knowledge. Taken whisky and the Mercedes and gone for an illicit spin.
  A statement from the police confirms as much: Ajay, employee of Gautam Rathore, stole a bottle of whisky from Rathore’s home while his employer was away, took the Mercedes for a joyride, lost control.
This story becomes fact.
It settles in the papers.
And the FIR is registered.
Ajay, son of Hari, is booked under Section 304A of the Indian Penal Code. Death due to negligence. Maximum sentence: two years.

He is sent to the crowded courthouse and presented to the district magistrate, the magistrate takes two minutes to send him to judicial custody with no consideration of bail. He is driven with the other prisoners on a bus to Tihar Jail. They are lined up for processing; they sit in sullen rows on wooden benches in the reception hall, surrounded by placards with rules hammered into the damp, pockmarked plaster of the walls. When his turn arrives, he’s taken into a cramped office where a clerk and a prison doctor with their typewriter and stethoscope await. His possessions are laid out once more: wallet, money clip containing twenty thousand rupees, the book of matches bearing the name Palace Grande, the empty shoulder holster. The money is counted.
The clerk takes his pencil and begins to fill out the form.
“Name?”
The prisoner stares at them.
“Name?”
“Ajay,” he says, barely audible.
“Father’s name?”
“Hari.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Occupation?”
“Driver.”
“Speak up.”
“Driver.”
“Who is your employer?”
The clerk looks over his glasses.
“What is the name of your employer?”
“Gautam Rathore.”
  Ten thousand rupees are taken from his money, the rest is handed back to him.
“Put it in your sock,” the clerk says.

He is processed and sent to Jail No. 1, led through the courtyard to the barracks, taken along the dank corridor to a wide cell where nine other inmates live crowded and packed. Clothes hang from the cell bars like in a market stall, and the floor inside is covered with tattered mattresses, blankets, buckets, bundles, sacks. A small squatting latrine in the corner. Though there’s no room left, the warden orders a small space to be cleared out for him on the cold floor next to the latrine. But no mattress can be spared. Ajay lays the blanket he’s been given on the stone floor. He sits with his back to the wall, staring vacantly ahead. A few of his cellmates come and tell him their names, but he says nothing, acknowledges nothing. He curls into a ball and sleeps.

When he comes to, he sees a man standing over him. Old and missing teeth, with frantic eyes. More than sixty years on earth, he is saying. More than sixty years. He’s an autorickshaw driver from Bihar, or at least he was on the outside. He’s been here awaiting trial for six years. He’s innocent. It’s one of the first things he says. “I’m innocent. I’m supposed to be a drug peddler. But I’m innocent. I was caught in the wrong place. A peddler was in my rickshaw, but he ran and the cops took me.” He goes on to ask what Ajay is charged with, how much money he has hidden away with him. Ajay ignores him, turns in the opposite direction. “Suit yourself,” the old man cheerfully says, “but you should know, I can get things done around here. For one hundred rupees I can get you another blanket, for one hundred rupees I can get you a better meal.”  “Let him be,” hollers another cellmate, a plump, dark boy from Aligarh, who is picking his teeth with a piece of neem. “Don’t you know who he is, he’s the Mercedes Killer.” The old man shuffles off. “I’m Arvind,” the fat boy says. “They say I killed my wife, but I’m innocent.”

Out into the courtyard, break time. Hundreds of inmates piling out of their cells to congregate. Men size him up. He’s something of a celebrity. They’ve all heard about the Mercedes Killer. They want a closer look, judge for themselves his innocence or guilt, see how tough he is, how scared, decide where he could belong. It only takes a minute to recognize he’s one of the innocent, a scapegoat for a wealthy boss. Men try to prize this truth from him. What was he promised to take the fall? Something sweet? Money, when he gets out? Or will his sons and daughters be sent through school? Or did it come from the other side? Was his family threatened? Was his life in danger? Or was he just loyal?
  Representatives from the gangs that run the jail approach him in the yard, in the dining hall, in the corridors, canvass his support, present their pitch. The Chawanni gang, the Sissodia gang, the Beedi gang, the Haddi gang, the Atte gang. The dreaded Bawania gang. The Acharya gang, the Guptas. As an innocent man, as a man unaccustomed to the criminal life, he will need protection. He will soon become a target for extortion if he does not pick a gang; without a gang’s support, a man will rape him soon enough, a warden will have him transferred to a cell, alone with another cellmate, he will be his sport, no one will come when he screams. And they’ll take whatever money he has. They offer this as sage and neutral advice, as if they were not the threat. He is pulled this way and that. What money do you have? Join our gang. Join our gang and you’ll have security. You’ll have a mobile phone, pornography, chicken. You’ll be exempt from the “freshers party” coming your way. Join our gang and you can fuck, you can rape. Our gang is the strongest. You should join us before it’s too late. He ignores each pitch. By the time he returns to his cell, his blanket has been taken away.

 

He prefers to be alone and in pain anyway. The horror of the dead follows him inside, he mourns them as he breathes. He refuses all the gangs, snubs the emissaries and their overtures. So on the second day, outside the pharmacy, alone, just after he’s been called to visit the doctor, three men from another cell converge on him. They stick out their tongues and remove the razor blades they keep in their mouths; they set upon him, slashing at his face and chest and the forearms he raises to protect himself. He takes the cuts in penance, making no expression of pain. Then his patience finally snaps, breaks like a trapdoor. He shatters his first attacker’s nose with the heel of his palm, takes the second man’s arm at the elbow and snaps it at the joint. The third he sweeps down to the floor. He snatches one of their razors and takes it to this man’s tongue, slicing it down the middle, squeezing the squealing prisoner’s jaw open with his grip.

He’s found standing over them, splattered in blood, the prisoners howling in pain as he’s locked in solitary in a daze. They beat him, tell him he’ll be there for a very long time. Once the door shuts, he goes wild, snarling and slapping and kicking the walls. Screaming without language. Incomprehensible words. He cannot control his world.

  * * *
He imagines the end. Everything he is and all he’s done. But no. The next morning, the door is opened, new guards enter. They tell him to come with them. He’ll shower first. He’s shivering naked and raw. When they approach, he curls his fists, back to the wall, to fight. They laugh and throw him fresh clothes.

He’s taken to the warden’s office. A pleasing spread: freshly cut fruit, paratha, lassi. A vision of paradise. The warden asks him to sit. “Have a cigarette. Help yourself. There’s been a mistake. I wasn’t told,” he says. “If I’d been told, this would never have happened. Really, no one knew, not even your friends. But things will be different. You’ll be taken to your friends here now. You’ll be free, within reason. And this unfortunate business with those other men, this will be forgotten. They could be punished. Only, you punished them yourself, didn’t you!? Quite a show. Oh, and this money, it’s yours. You should have said something. You should have made it clear. You should have let us know. Why didn’t you let us know?”
  Ajay stares at the food, at the cigarette pack.
“Know what?”
The warden smiles.
“That you’re a Wadia man.”US

Additional information

Dimensions	1.7000 × 6.3800 × 9.5500 in
Imprint	Riverhead Books
ISBN-13	09780593328798
ISBN-10	0593328795
Author	Deepti Kapoor
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC019000, FIC045000
Subjects	good morning america book club, crime novels, best books, best books 2023, new york times best sellers, bestseller books, bestselling books, book club gifts, gma book club picks, crime drama, gma book club, crime novel, mafia books, age of vice, age of vice deepti kapoor, book best sellers, award winning books for adults, books for mom, family, thriller, FIC045000, suspense, ny times best sellers, FIC019000, book club books, gifts for mom, crime, crime fiction, thrillers, best sellers, mafia, india, book club recommendations, crime books