Narrator Sartaj Garewal's energy couldn't be more rousingly infectious as he voices the unforgettable characters in Adiga's (The White Tiger) latest. Raised in a Mumbai slum by a fiercely demanding father, the two Kumar brothers are destined to become cricket champions by the sheer will of their training-obsessed parent. Radha, the elder, is already a local celebrity, but Manju, now 14, is quickly gaining the attention of top talent scout Tommy Sir and local businessman Anand Mehta, who is convinced Manju just might be his next best investment. Caught in the whirlwind of other people's expectations and demands, Manju has little time to consider what he wants and who he wishes to be as the brothers must come to terms with unpredictable, uncertain futures. Garewal's impressive range makes each character memorably distinct, from confident Radha and questioning Manju to their ambitious father and an enthralling cast of friends, followers, and detractors. His spirited presentation is an unflagging delight, enhancing an already stupendous narrative with even more gusto and charm. VERDICT No literary fiction collection would be complete without this Selection. ["Committed readers will find a solid story between the wickets": LJ 1/17 review of the Scribner hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

With his brilliant, raw energy ricocheting off of every line, Booker winner Adiga (White Tiger) turns his wry wit and his scrutiny to the youth leagues of cricket in Mumbai, following the successes and failures of teenage brothers Radha Krishna and Manjunath Kumar, who have been both formed and broken by their visionary but abusive father, Mohan. Brought to Mumbai as children after their mother left, the boys have grown up in a "one-room brick shed, divided by a green curtain." Ever since, they've spent every hour hoping and preparing for a different future, which they know depends on their ability to outshine all the other boys on the cricket field. To either help or hinder this process comes a cast of scouts, recruiters, and hangers-on, each of whom is etched with Adiga's trademark clarity-they are as defined by their fate as they are resentful of it. "Revenge is the capitalism of the poor," he writes, describing Mohan's resolve to prove the potential of his sons, as well as their eventual attempts to escape him. But the claim also fuels the energy of the novel as a whole, unraveling the tremendous grit and fierce inner conflicts that come with the pursuit of revenge. Though Radha is known throughout Mumbai as the "best batsman" and Manju the "second best batsman," this is shockingly upturned, a move from which no one ever quite recovers. Meanwhile, as Manju in particular comes of age, he wrestles with what the sport demands and what he's willing to sacrifice in turn. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* For a chutney salesman, slum-dweller like Mohan Kumar, a comfortable life in the crushing metropolis that is Mumbai is pretty much beyond reach. His only ticket to middle-class respectability lies in his boys: Radha and Manjunath. Radha shows infinite promise in cricket, India's national obsession, and the younger brother, Manju, is not lacking in talent either. Their mother might have escaped Mohan's punishing grip, but the boys' path is predetermined by their controlling father: there can be no junk food, no computer games; they are not even allowed to shave sacrifices made at the altar of cricket. Adiga (Last Man in Tower, 2011) searingly explores abusive parental control as the siblings come of age against contemporary India's explosive conflicts over class and religion. A master class in integrating character and landscape, Adiga's novel also portrays Mumbai as alternatively stifling and liberating. My life is not limited by your imagination, declares Manju, whose talent and sexuality veer from the prescribed course. But can this truism really apply to him? Can Manju break free from his father, from a harshly rigid society? Peppered with dashes of humor, this dark and unflinching story is an unqualified triumph. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The latest compelling novel from Man Booker Prize winner Adiga will be strongly promoted to his legions of fans and all lovers of superb fiction.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2016 Booklist

A satirical novel set in the author's native Mumbai, where Indian boys from the slums find themselves hot commodities because of their potential in cricket.Even readers who know nothing about the sport will find this as easy to understand as if it were a novel about American inner-city kids groomed for success in basketball, facing long odds as an escape from poverty. In the third novel by Adiga, who won the Man Booker Prize for his debut (The White Tiger, 2008), the protagonist is Manju, 7 years old at the outset, overshadowed by the cricket prowess of his older brother. An influential gatekeeper and columnist named Tommy Sir sees potential in both boys, bringing them to the attention of a venture capitalist. The boys' father also sees the commercial potential in his sons and wants to maximize his percentage, holding them to rules he enforces strictly, even when they don't make much sense. The older son, Radha, is the first to rebel, "now conscious that his father's rules, which had framed the world around him since he could remember, were prison bars." Manju thus becomes the hope for the family and perhaps Mumbai, where young cricketers show the possibility of "creating new value in a dead city." But the younger brother faces plenty of coming-of-age challenges of his own, as cricket must compete with a potential girlfriend, with his interest in forensic science as nurtured by CSI, and, most of all, by a boy from a patrician background who also forsakes cricket but has options that the much poorer Manju does not. "He's my real father," says Manju of the richer friend he tries to emulate, before sexual identity as well as class distinction complicate the picture. As Manju tries to figure out who he really is and what he wants, the author suggests that "this Republic (so-called) of India, was filled to the brim with the repressed, depressed, and dangerous." Incisive and often wickedly funny as social commentary, though many characters are more like caricatures and the finale doesn't resolve much. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

THE HOUR OF LAND: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks, by Terry Tempest Williams. (Picador, $18.) After visiting 12 national parks, Williams examines their role in shaping the country's politics, history and people in these essays. Her writing can take on an activist's urgency: Williams's "alarm at humanity's calamitous impact on nature is indelibly imprinted in her writing," our reviewer, Andrea Wulf, said. NICOTINE, by Nell Zink. (Ecco/ HarperCollins, $15.99.) With her father in hospice, Penny returns to his childhood home in New Jersey, where she encounters a troupe of squatters who have overrun the homestead. She soon falls in love with their unofficial chief, Rob, and with their way of life. But when Penny's family moves to evict the squatters, she must act to protect their fragile community. REVOLUTION ON THE HUDSON: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American War of Independence, by George C. Daughan. (Norton, $18.95.) As a central economic channel, connecting New England to the other colonies, the Hudson River was a critical strategic front for both sides during the Revolutionary War. But Britain's intense pursuit of winning control of the region during the conflict may have cost it victory, Daughan argues. MISCHLING, by Affinity Konar. (Lee Boudreaux/ Back Bay, $16.99.) In this affecting and occasionally lyrical debut novel, Konar draws on real-life figures from World War II, including Josef Mengele, who inflicted unspeakable horrors on prisoners at Auschwitz - and had a particular interest in twins. This story's central characters, Stasha and Pearl, twin sisters who are fiercely close, arrive at the camp when they are 12; Mengele's experiments on them threaten to distance one sister from the other. MAGIC AND LOSS: The Internet as Art, by Virginia Heffernan. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) The internet is too often hailed as simply a technological achievement, without enough attention to its creative foundation, Heffernan, a journalist and critic, says. She approaches the web as an artistic masterpiece, structuring her book around what she sees as its aesthetic building blocks: design, text, photography, music. SELECTION DAY, by Aravind Adiga. (Scribner, $16.) Two brothers in India are groomed by their poor fcv"' father to become cricket Jfc/' stars. The story "pulses with affection for Mumbai," our reviewer, Marcel Theroux said, praising the book's "broad sweep, accomplished with commendable economy and humor, in a sinewy, compact prose that has the grace and power of a gifted athlete."