"THE CITY OF JOY" by Dominique Lapierre.

La Cite De La Joie’ is a book originally published in French as the writer himself is. Dominique Lapierre is the author who has produced more work but this is the first book of his I have come across. English edition of the book came in the market in 1999, since then it has been bought by millions of the readers in some thirty languages around the world. The fluency and the beauty of the language of the book is somewhere lost in English translation which happens to almost every translated work. Though the book is full of stories of destitute and unfortunate people living in inhuman conditions but there happiness seems to be coming out of the very compulsion of the lack of hope rather than from any glorious spirituality. If small things make Hasari Pal happy it is because he just can not dream of bigger happiness. If lepers of the Aanand Nagar are happy and content in spite of all the pain and above all the social conditioning it is because they are anyways nearing death. It is difficult for me to fathom the suggestion of the narrator that their contentment comes from a spiritual experience.

                                  If at all there is spirituality and glory it is in the deeds of Father Kovalski whose choice is such that he is among the most unfortunates of the society. Dr. Max Loeb coming to the slum to work for the poor for a span of a year and sharing their condition is glorious to me. Bondona’s heroic efforts for the poorest are amazingly beautiful but little light is thrown on her. The book starts from Hasari Pal but leaves him somewhere in the middle and focuses more on Dr. Loeb and Kovalski. Hasari Pal’s family required more light and his wife even more as she too struggled with misery at every step. The story tries to cover too many areas avoiding entering small details of any one person’s life, though a thorough account is given about pathetic condition of the slum. The Godfather of the slum, Manubai, Dr. Arthur Loeb’s visit, Ghosh couple, Amrita and many other characters are left midway without much lead. The fact that there are too many people in the slum stretches the book for five hundred pages.

                                  All this can be spared as the work is not a fictional one. It is an experience consisting of real life stories of real people struggling to find their daily means. The best part is the kind of help it has generated for the poor and downtrodden of slums and made millions of people aware of their fellow humans’ plight. As a work it deserves praise, not literary merit. It needs to be bought and read by those who are capable as half of the money goes to charity. Slums are better and beautifully described in works like SHANTARAM by Gregory David Roberts where it indeed looks like a happy place. City Of Joy is rather not a City Of Joy. As a book it earns six and half marks out of ten.