The Association of Small Bombs

by Karan Mahajan

Hardcover, 288 pages

English language

Published March 22, 2016

ISBN:: 978-0-525-42963-0
OCLC Number:: 933728384

(7 reviews)

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2016

When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, go to pick up their family’s television set at a repair shop with their friend Mansoor Ahmed one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb—one of the many “small” bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world—detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys to the devastation of their parents.

Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for …

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2016

3 editions

GG reviewed The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

Review of 'The Association of Small Bombs' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

1.5 stars. I read this because it was a National Book Award finalist, and I'm not sure why. It takes a single, key event (a terrorist's bomb that explodes at a market in India) and follows its emotional and practical repercussions out over the lifetimes of multiple characters whose points of view alternate. This premise, while not particularly original, can often be interesting, but in this case I didn't care about any of the characters, found the prose to be clunky and long-winded, and ended up skimming through many narrative passages that went nowhere. Not one I would recommend.