KEEPING IT RAW

ANEES SALIM'S AIM ISN'T TO MAKE GRAND STATEMENTS, BUT TO SIMPLY TELL AN UNFILTERED, POIGNANT, COMPLEX TALE

- Jai Arjun Singh

THE BELLBOY

Anees Salim

PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

₹599; 232 pages

At one point in Anees Salim’s deeply moving new novel, The Bellboy (2022), the protagonist, Latif, a young island boy working at a lodge on the mainland, thinks about a newspaper headline he had read earlier: ‘Saffron Sweeps Nation’. Latif, with his very limited English, can’t be sure of what it means, and thus he rearranges the words in his head. Is it “Nation Saffron Sweeps”? Or is it “Nation Sweeps Saffron”? Much later, the words reappear at a crucial moment, and he still does not know their import.