SOURCE: "Return to Casaquemada," in New Statesman and Society, September 16, 1988, p. 42.

In the following, Kureishi gives a mixed review of the novel.

I thought Neil Bissoondath's first collection of short stories, Digging Up the Mountains, was excellent. So it fascinated me to see whether this writer who had attained such cool ease over 200 meters could raise the stamina, distance and kicks of speed required for the 10,000 meters of his first novel. The answer is yes and no.

A Casual Brutality is the story, told in carefully assembled fragments, of Raj Ramsingh, a young and intelligent man of Indian extraction, growing up on the Caribbean island—"shaped like an inverted tear drop"—of Casaquemada. As a sort of wild suburb of the first world after years of colonial rule, Casaquemada is a place to leave, not a place to take over your grandfather's store. Raj, brought up by his...