Fast–paced and innovative, No God in Sight captures the seething multiplicity of Bombay through the first–person accounts of an abortionist, a convert, a pregnant refugee, a gangster in hiding, a butcher, and an apathetic CEO, among others.

As the reader is hurtled from monologue to short story to anecdote, disparate lives collide in tantalizing ways. A family flees religious persecution in their village to take refuge in an urban slum; women walk the tightrope of free will and dormant violence; a father and son grant each other the relief of estrangement; and young men and women struggle to comprehend the consequences of sexual attraction. At the heart of the action is the city itself: a teeming, breathing, suffering Bombay that demands subservience and total surrender before it will sanction survival.

Insightful, ironic, and scathingly honest, No God in Sight is a brilliant debut by a talented young writer.

Altaf Tyrewala lives in Bombay and Mumbai. He has worked as a cashier, a telemarketer, a clerk, and an instructional writer. This is his first novel.

My own blurb that appears on the back-cover sounds a somewhat staid, academic note: “Kudos to Altaf Tyrewala for returning the novel to its original, glorious function: giving a name to the city’s teeming masses, turning faces into individuals.”

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