This was one weird-woah-what-did-I-just-read book, but in a good way. So we have a surgeon, affectionately known as (Doctor) Saheb, and his two loyal staff – his pharmacist and her repairman husband, who worked at a clinic in a rural village in India. O upne night, they were visited by 3 walking, living corpses – a father, a pregnant mother and a young son. They were humans, just dead, violently murdered by bandits, and they had walked all the way from another district to this village just to see the surgeon. They needed him to save their lives, which the surgeon thought was ridiculous because they were already dead. After the father told him and convinced him of their afterlife story - that they were given a chance to live again by some kind official in the afterlife - the surgeon felt like he was given no choice but to help. And he was given a deadline – he had to ‘save’ them by sunrise. If he failed to do so, the patients would die all over again and stay in the afterlife forever.

The book opened to a very bitter surgeon, seeing his patients without much care, as opposed to his pharmacist who showed to have more grace, compassion and empathy towards the patients, and one could see how loyal she and her husband were towards the surgeon despite his cold treatment towards them. But there was more to Doctor Saheb than what he showed in public. As the story of the living dead unfolded, so did his.

This was such a thought-provoking read.

The surgeon was accused of causing the death of one of his patients and cast out to this remote place. He accepted the job here because he had no other choice. He, who once believed in “Help(ing) those who come to me”, and taking matters in his own hands, now, wasn’t so sure about it anymore after what happened, especially when odds kept stacking against him, one after another – first his job, then the visit from the official, now this. It’s no surprise that he didn’t believe in God.

While on the other hand, the pharmacist, was God-fearing and whose life’s principles was guided by her religion and beliefs, always believed in leaving life in God’s hands, “Whatever happen, let it happen. Why try to change it?” She tried to dissuade the surgeon from changing the fate of the three patients, who were meant to be dead.

On the day before the murder took place, the patients took pity on an old and tired palmist they came across at a village fair and had their palms read, and was told that they'll have long lives. Evidently, the palmist lied and the father hated him for that. Later, we'd find out that the father too, had lied to his family and the surgeon about their afterlife situation, which angered all of them.

But the palmist and the father did what they had to do because they had a chance to save their lives. Was it wrong to do so? Quoting the official who visited the surgeon that day, “It’s that everything about sin lies in how you choose to look at it.” And the question he posed to the surgeon, “…if you find yourself in a position where you have to harm someone to preserve your own life, what would you do?”

And the official, seemed to me, to be the afterlife official in disguise who had come to teach the surgeon a lesson about living and the afterlife, about giving life and taking lives; and the baby from the pregnant lady, in my opinion, was there to give the surgeon a second chance at living his life differently, and to be a little God-fearing, maybe. But then again, if the surgeon heeded the pharmacist’s advice, that was to not interfere with God's will, the baby wouldn’t gave gotten a second chance at life, would she?

Overall, this was a morbid, haunting tale that would stay with me for quite awhile. I think this would make a great Book Club book. But be warned, the surgeries performed were described in detail, hence, not for the squeamish. I skimmed those parts.

Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult Publishing for providing me with a copy of Night Theatre by Vikram Paralkar. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

Wow, for a book with so few pages there is plenty to dissect. It is obvious after only a few pages that Vikram Paralkar is a skilled and talented research scientist and author. His attention to medical detail and rural impoverished India is keenly felt throughout this allegory. We meet a doctor, who is overworked, underpaid and unpleased with his current situation. Working in an outdated, unfunded clinic he is met one evening by three patients seeking treatments for injuries that appear unimaginable. With the aid of his pharmacist, and her devoted husband the three attempt to tamper with fate and try and save the three injured patients. And so begins this peculiar, philosophical, magical evening.

Kudos to the author for writing such an evocative and unsettling story that had me contemplating so many aspects of the moral and just scenarios the entire time. This would be a phenomenal bookclub choice as there is so much to mull over.
Just a word of warning, parts of this book are not for the squeamish as the medical procedures are rather vivid.

A great novel, engrossing and entertaining that kept me hooked till the end.
I loved the magic realism that permeates this book, the well thought cast of characters and the well written plot.
It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

We meet a Disgraced Surgeon stuck in a village clinic who hates it and its people, yet goes on his job. His clinic is always short of supplies and often he puts his own money to fund those supplies. He has a local woman and her husband working as pharmacist and errand man. His superior who is in charge of this clinic doesn't provide enough funds to keep the clinic going.

Along with all these problems, our surgeon encounters one more supernatural challenge where he has to fix the wounds of a dead family who visit him one evening. Only if the surgeon is successful before the sunrise the dead will walk again.

I liked the book where the story line was really small but yet said much. The narration was good and included gory details (for me!) of surgeries which I had to skim read. A small book throwing light on corruption in medical world with magical realism.




Thank You Netgalley for the Copy in exchange of a honest Review.

Happy Reading!!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC!

3.5 out of 4 stars, rounded up because I just can't think of any major flaws at all.

This book is a weird one to review. There weren't any major flaws in the writing or story, but I just didn't fully connect with it. It was a great novel, but just something kept it away from being a 5 stars. I liked it, but I wasn't in love with it. If that makes sense.

The ending has me with mixed feelings. Part of me likes it, but the other part of me hates. Won't spoil it but if you like literary fiction you'll probably like the ending more than I did. It is definitely an ending style that you see a lot in literary fiction.

It was an interesting choice to only name the main character, as everyone else just has an identifier. "Pharmacist" "teacher", etc.

I don't really have much more to say. It was a quick read and I did like it, but I don't see myself yelling about it or re-reading it (at least not anytime soon).

Night Theater was unlike any book I've read before. A surgeon, after a scandal in a big city, moves to a small village in Indian, and, unhappily, works at the village clinic. After a typical long and difficult day, the surgeon is dutifully working on ledgers, when a husband, wife, and child walk into his clinic. They say they were injured in a robbery earlier that night, and, upon showing him their wounds, the surgeon realizes they are, in fact, dead. He has until dawn to repair their injuries if there is any chance of them living again. While this sounds like a ghost story, it reads more like a fable. The surgeries are severely gruesome, so that's something to note if you are squeamish. I raced through this, much like the surgeon raced the clock, to see how it all unfolded. It was thought-provoking and compelling, and it's a novel I'm going to push on my friends because I'd like to talk about it!

Thank you to NetGalley, Counterpoint Press, and Catapult for this ARC, out January 2020!

I absolutely breezed through this book in no time at all. From the description, it sounded more like a dark comedy, but it truly is more of a life or death (no pun intended) thriller from beginning to end. I really didn't know what to expect going in, but Paralkar paints his pictures so vividly, and sometimes a little too vividly in regards to all of the surgical procedures that take place. He clearly has done his research, but more than that, he knows how to create characters that take on a life of their own, and you feel for each person throughout this novel. I loved that it all took place in one area, which is a thing I also tend to love in films as well. Even though the story is confined to a small space, it never feels that way. It is a tale of the afterlife, human nature, faith, and above all human kindness and what lengths we will go to to save ourselves and those we love. I can't wait for people to be able to read this, and now I need to get my hands on Paralkar's other work!

A little magical realism...a little knife-edge medical drama...a little dark and stormy night (ok, there is no storm but...)...over the course of one lone, dark night, a surgeon working in a remote Indian village is visited by three ostensibly dead family members who want to be resurrected by nights end.

Paralkar knows how to set a mood and a tone. Although it is a bit slow at first, the novel does eventually take shape and the reader is drawn into this bizarre story through the narrative that manages to intricately weave the horror of the dead family with overarching themes of social, racial, class, etc. critique. The fact that the action of the story takes place over the course of one night adds to the mood and creates great pacing for the story.

Paralkar has created an unusual little gem of a dark fable that is certainly worth a read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Catapult for an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A very good, earnest tale with well-written characters and interesting plot. This talented author writes with a really style and this has the feel of a play, and it's quite engaging. Recommended if seeking a magic realism read.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

Sort of magical realism, sort of allegory, sort of horror. I was enchanted and repulsed in equal measure, but in all the best ways. A very atmospheric novel that at times reminded me of Pan’s Labrynth. So smart and twisty.

I really enjoyed this weird, surreal, allegorical novel. It made me think about the ethics of medical treatment, the corruption of the health care industry, and the nature of love, family, career, and faith. I don't want to give spoilers, because so much of the unsettling plot turns on the gothic details of this small-town surgeon's ethical dilemma. I felt myself pulled along by Paralkar's disconcerting slow revelation of exactly what is going on in this book. And, for a book which basically freaked me out the majority of the time, I found the culmination/revelation in literally the final paragraph to be a bright and beautiful gesture.

Highly recommended,

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Night Theater is one of those reads that won't let you go. It leaves you with far more questions coming out than you had going in, and that is one of it's real strengths. Nothing in this story is simple, despite how straightforward the narrative feels.

The premise is relatively straightforward, if fantastic. A cynical physician in a rural clinic in India is confronted with three dead people who claim they will be able to live again if he repairs their wounds before the sun rises. From that point, thins spin out with increasing complexity.

I don't want to say too much about this title for fear of interfering with the process of reading it—but I do strongly recommend that readers grab the opportunity to live through that night with the physician at the story's center.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions are my own.

With a story that feels like The Good Place meets Paulo Coehlo (minus the comedy), this book is enchanting from start to finish. The prose has an allegorical bite, and it reads in a way that hooks into you and doesn't let you go. I haven't stopped thinking about the story since I finished it, and honestly I find myself continually trying to work out all the messages hidden within this macabre story.

I found Paralkar's story to be intricately well crafted. The fact that the bulk of the story takes place over the course of a single night means there's never time for the reader to get bored. At the same time, it doesn't feel like too much has been packed into that time frame, either. The pacing carries you along with ease.

The characters, too, are written with compassion. The surgeon is aging and irascible, but we see enough of him that we appreciate who he is. The pharmacist is warm and caring, her husband loyal and trusting. The family – a teacher, his wife, and their young son – all have distinct personalities and flaws. And this is going to sound bizarre, but I was so immersed in the story, in these characters, that I didn't realize that none of them had names until after I'd finished the book.

But perhaps the most marvelous thing about Night Theater was that it was never exactly as I expected it to be. It took turns I would never anticipate, little twists and turns that sometimes took my breath away, and the ending is the kind of ending that leaves you thinking about its implications long after you've finished reading.

In the end, this is a story with a breathtaking scope. It's a story about what life takes away from you and what it gives back, about sacrifice, compromise, intrinsic value, and picking your battles. It's about hope or the lack thereof, about optimism or pessimism, and about so many other things I'm still dissecting.Poetic without being overly prose-y, I finished this book with the ultimate sense of having read something beautiful.

This was so compelling and weird and morbidly fascinating. It captures a single night in rural India when a family (pregnant mom, dad, and son) appears at the doors of the local rundown clinic and tells the doctor that they were murdered last night and that their only chance to live again is if the doctor can successfully fix their wounds overnight.

This is one of those books that makes me wish I had gotten an English degree so I could talk a little more intelligently about it. Like what is it when a plot is structured as a framework to explore philosophical ideas- life, death, human connection, corruption, etc.? Would it be an allegory? I think that implies more of an aspect of overt moralizing than this book goes in for, though;<b> even though it's an excellent playground for some really interesting ideas, it isn't emotionally manipulative or trite. </B>It could easily have gone Scrooge and the three Christmas ghosts, culminating in some convenient life lesson, but thankfully it doesn't.

The story's overall <b>lack of sentimentality is one of the main reasons it worked so well </b>for me. There are some really great moments where the narrative acknowledges the places where it could easily fall into the expectations for this type of story and purposefully doesn't: 

<Blockquote>The teacher's story was like a bizarre fable- something a priest might deliver in a religious ceremony. But there were no flowers here, no lamps or burning inherence to make the unreality more palatable.</Blockquote>

Or

<Blockquote>It was tempting to adopt the pharmacist's way of thinking about the world and everything in it. Whatever would happen would happen, she'd said... Or something similar, some aphorism of endless absolving circularity.</Blockquote>

I also liked exploring a lot of the themes here- the concrete consequences off bureaucratic corruption, how people treat you versus how you percieve yourself, <b>how you act when </b>you are completely out of your depth and <b>your yardstick for what's right and wrong has been utterly demolished. </B>

A lot of this was represented well in the contrast between how the older, disillusioned doctor reacts to the situation versus how his young, religious pharmacist experiences it. And even though this feels fable-like in that the characters are all unnamed (the pharmacist, the teacher, etc.), I thought the characterizations were quite well done; they <b>always felt like real people rather than cardboard metaphors</b>.

The last thing I have to mention is how <b>I loved the way it leans into the bizarre grossness of it all. </B>The descriptions of the surgeries kept me absolutely glued to the page!

Overall just great ideas, great story, great characterizations, delightfully weird, couldn't put it down!