Devesh Verma was associated with television journalism for over twenty-two years before he quit to complete his novel. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for the translation of
Sakhtiyat, Pas-Sakhtiyat Aur Mashriqi Sheriyat, an important literary and cultural theory text, from Urdu to Hindi in 2004.
Ram Mohan is an intrepid and ambitious young man in newly independent India, who refuses to be held down by his humble origins. Spurred on by his diehard optimism, he aims for things usually inaccessible to people of his extraction. However, he soon realizes that without political or bureaucratic power, the idea of a respectable life in India is nothing but pretence, and when Gulab Singh rescues him from being insulted by a thug, Ram Mohan becomes persuaded of the efficacy of violence in certain situations . . .
Beginning at the peak of Nehruvian era and ending in the early seventies, The Politician is an enthralling, evocative view of provincial northern India-once the political heartland of the country-and the ebb and flow of the fortunes of its protagonists.
'The Politician is a deft narrative about the deep heartache of politics behind the thin glamour of power. This work of fiction should be reclassified as fact.''Every bit a twenty-first-century Indian English novel, it neither tries to write back to a centre nor cares for a Western reader. The novel captures both the energy and the chaos that characterise life in small towns in Uttar Pradesh, showing effortlessly both the machinations of power politics and mounds of filth.''From Jawaharlal Nehru's subtle handing over of the political mantle to his daughter Indira Gandhi to BR Ambedkar's fight for the untouchables, or his proposed Hindu Code Bill being seen as "wicked interference with the age-old Hindu personal laws of divine provenance", there is hardly any political event of significance that has escaped Verma's attention. . . . The gentle and effortless unravelling of these complex minds, and the timelessness of this tragic-comic novel by Verma, who won a Sahitya Award for a translated work in 2004, deserves praise.''At several points in the novel one felt the echoes of the plenitude of Hindu and Urdu voices that Devesh must have absorbed through his intellectual journey. That he can make us feel and smell those writings in an English novel is a singular achievement....This is a remarkable debut and one eagerly looks forward to the second instalment of what promises to be a colossal trilogy.''Devesh Verma's debut novel, The Politician, though, exquisitely upends this dominant model of the political novel that oscillates between fact and fiction and highlights the success and skulduggery of corrupt and ruthless politicians. With well-fleshed-out characters, Devesh Verma weaves a gripping narrative around a flawed hero's quest for unbridled power.'
