On New Year’s Eve, a tourist is raped in Kadaloor, a tranquil fishing village on the southern coast of the country. The chief suspects are a group of teenaged boys (called the Cliffhangers). As they attempt to prove their innocence, the boys also have to deal with the spectre of communal intolerance that is beginning to divide the Hindu and Muslim fishermen and villagers. Numerous small incidents, in which the boys are sought to be implicated, help ratchet up the stress. The growing communal tension and the hunt for the real rapist intersect, propelling the village to the edge of disaster. In The Cliffhangers, Sabin Iqbal gives us a brilliant debut novel that illuminates hard truths about the religious fault lines that are dividing the country.
