Plot

Nobody Likes An Outsider starts with the death of a young Indian politician called Ashraf Zain. As the investigation leads the Bihar Police to declare his death as a suicide, Ashraf’s PA Piyali Sharma is found dead in a hotel room under mysterious circumstances. Political pressure and civil society’s movements lead to the entry of the CBI.

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The CBI is led by Yohan Tytler and assisted by officers Ila Qureshi and Sukumar Azhagu. As the team takes goes deeper into the investigation, it comes across strange case facts and evidences and it soon realises that there is more than what meets the eye in this political murder.

Soon, there are a number of suspects including politicians, religious leaders, businessmen, acquaintances, and college students. The case gets more confusing as the CBI team slowly realises that these murders are connected to the modern history of India, and Bihar.

Book Review & Analysis

The book successfully manages to keep the readers hooked until the mystery is solved. There is ample build up that increases tension in the minds of the readers as they prepare themselves to find out the killers and their motive.

It is one of those rare political thrillers and mysteries that is able to close all the loops it opens and justifies the route of the investigation. However, as the book enters Chapters 8 and 9, there seem to be a stretch in the description and the reader doesn’t learn new facts as they were doing in the previous ones. But, the book regains momentum after Chapter 9 and picks up its earlier set pace.

While the book gets a lot of its gender politics right, barring one or two strong women characters, the book has mostly male characters through whom the story travels. There were some women characters who could have been explored in slightly more detail than what the book has done currently.

That said, the author has made a conscious effort to quash the possible occurrences of patriarchy among writers. The book does justice in terms of giving the women characters their due and occasionally speaks on concepts such as ‘consent’ and ‘gender stereotyping’. Another positive aspect of the book is its refusal to mince words and appease the ‘minority’ nor the ‘majority’.

Often, Indian writers try to balance sensitivities and shy away from calling out certain religious practices. Fawaz Jaleel manages to take a bold approach and question what is seemingly incorrect. This could also be a negative as readers are used to a certain treatment in the majority v/s minority debate and Fawaz Jaleel’s stance may not appeal to some of them.

Another positive of Nobody Likes An Outsider is the quality of research. The writer has put in a solid effort to weave incidents in Indian history using a tight narrative that occasionally makes the reader wonder if it is a true story. The book, however, does dwell a bit too much into detail that could have been avoided. The climax which reveals the killer and the motive deserves a huge shout out as this will stand out as one of the bravest endings in contemporary Indian literature.

In conclusion, this political thriller novel, Nobody Likes An Outsider by Fawaz Jaleel is a solid debut that keeps the readers hooked until the end and deserves a reading for its storytelling, tight narration, and impeccable research.