Battle Fatigue

The tale of a terrorist told to literary excess.

IT IS NOT UNUSUAL or surprising that Kiran Nagarkar has chosen for his new novel God8217;s Little Soldier a protagonist, Zia Khan, who is self-involved, confused, spite-ful, deluded and violent. Excellent novels have been written about such characters. In-deed, what could be more compelling than the story of a man who has to deal with the world but cannot see clearly and is shackled by his own failings?

What is unusual, however, is the extent to which the narratorial perspective of God8217;s Little Soldier exists in faithful servitude to the worldview of its central character. Far from summoning cool intelligence to balance out his vast madness, it aggrandises him even further, echoing Zia8217;s slapdash thinking and love of anarchy with a linguistic sloppiness and a bogus grandiosity of its own. Zia is a terrorist, and God8217;s Little Soldier itself enacts a kind of literary terrorism.

Zia8217;s story is credible for only a fraction of this book. This is the early section where Na-garkar takes us through his childhood, his immersion in Islamic doctrine at the urging of his devout aunt Zubeida, and his convic-tion as he grows up that he is destined to be 8216;God8217;s little soldier8217;. Here one can take gen-uine pleasure in Nagarkar8217;s tracking of his protagonist. 8220;The power of mass prayer was a revelation to Zia,8221; he writes of Zia8217;s first visit to the mosque. 8220;He discovered that his prayers had more body and weight and rap-ture when he was among the believers in the mosque.8221; One understands why Zia wants to do something to shake up the world.

But how he shakes it up. Nagarkar8217;s Zia is a Superman. As a student in Cambridge, he decides to assassinate Salman Rushdie and hunts him down, only to be stymied at the last moment. Later he becomes a guerrilla in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

But in the second part of the novel, we see that he has suddenly renounced his precious Islamic faith to become the zealous Brother Lucens, a monk at an abbey. Here his activi-ties include making massive profits on the stock market, running a campaign against abortion, and setting up an organisation dedicated to8212;hold your breath8212;the total moral rejuvenation of godless, sinful Amer-ica.

In the third part of the novel we find that Lucens has taken up with a Hindu godman, Shakta Muni, and has taken on a new name, Tejas Nirantar. Zia has only the appearance of total freedom and independence. In reality he is a hostage to his whimsical creator, who makes him whatever he wants him to be. Worst of all is that this improbable story is narrated in Nagarkar8217;s new wild-eyed vagabond prose, so different from that of Cuckold. This is how a cold wind blows around Zia: 8220;It tore at him, slipped inside his trouser legs, groped at his crotch, ferreted in his armpits and careened into his lungs.8221; And although God8217;s Little Soldier purports to deal with questions of faith, it is really a ridiculous parody of the life of faith, even militant faith.