Online Nighttime Book Discussion - Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar

Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar

A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work.

But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds before sunrise.

So begins a night of quiet work, "as if the crickets had been bribed," during which the surgeon realizes his future is tied more closely to that of the dead family than he could have imagined. By dawn, he and his assistant have gained knowledge no mortal should have.

In this inventive novel charged with philosophical gravity and sly humor, Vikram Paralkar takes on the practice of medicine in a time when the right to health care is frequently challenged. Engaging earthly injustice and imaginaries of the afterlife, he asks how we might navigate corrupt institutions to find a moral center. Encompassing social criticism and magically unreal drama, Night Theater is a first novel as satisfying for its existential inquiry as for its enthralling story of a skeptical physician who arrives at a greater understanding of life's miracles.

This title is available to download for free in ebook and audiobook format from Hoopla. You can create a Hoopla account using your Longwood library card. Click the link for more information: https://www.hoopladigital.com/collection/8249

This program will be presented as a Zoom meeting. The URL and phone number for the "meeting" will be emailed to all registrants before the program.

Not sure how to use Zoom? Take a tutorial with our Tech Librarian Alison.