The recent story of Scarlette Keeling's death sent a deep chill down my spine,
especially when I recollected reading a novel about the hippies in Anjuna in
"The Ganja Coast" and I saw some interesting parallels between this case and
the case characterized in this novel by the author, Paul Mann.
Of special significance is the inclusion of a living character of one Dr.
Silvano Dias Sapeco in this novel by the author. So when I learnt that Prof.
Dr. Silvano Dias Sapeco was suspended recently, I couldn't help but wonder what
was going on. Did the author write a completely fictitious account about Dr.
Silvano's heroic work as a pathologist in the novel or is there something that
we don't know about?
In this novel "The Ganja Coast" there was a dead body of a Hippie child found
floating off Anjuna too. How coincidental?
And I found it very curious that no media observer ever referred this incident
to this novel, which was published in 1995, I believe.
If you have a chance to read this novel, you will find amazing coincidences to
the current story in Anjuna Goa.
Below you will find some reviews I googled about this novel. I believe the UK
born author now lives in Canada. I was surprised to find he has a very thorough
knowledge about Goa and India from what I read in his novel.
*********************************************
From Publishers Weekly
Tough to put down, this engrossing follow-up to Season of the Monsoon
(1993), brings back half-Indian, half-English George Sansi, newly
retired from the Bombay police. Sansi is tapped by his former boss,
Narendra Jamal, for some undercover sleuthing around the city of Goa,
where plans for a free port have shifted greed and crime into high
gear. Jamal hopes to bring down a corrupt, high-ranking minister
through his links to the dealings of Prem Gupta, who manages the
minister's illegal business (and Goa's government). Using a vacation
with Annie Ginnaro, his California-born lover who writes for the Times
of India, as a cover, Sansi soon finds that one of Jamal's contacts has
fled town and that the other, a former police pathologist disturbed by
the suspicious death of a nine-year-old American girl, is afraid to
help. "There is no law here," he warns. While Sansi stakes out Gupta,
Ginnaro makes friends among the area's transplanted American hippies,
who are now in the way of Goa's development. Sansi's blue eyes are more
distinctive than his personality and Ginnaro is often more irritating
than spirited, but Mann sketches the character of "the most corrupt
society on earth" with enthusiasm and detail, delivering his
imaginative, unpredictable tale with nearly irresistible style.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。
Book Description
"MANN'S INDIA GRABS YOU BY THE THROAT. . . .Sansi, an ex-cop turned lawyer,
is complex and compelling."--The Philadelphia InquirerEven
Goa, a sleepy beach community along India's "Ganja" coast, cannot
escape the creeping reach of corruption. As voracious developers gear
up to turn Goa into a moneymaking machine, lawyer George Sansi is
pressured to dig up evidence on the man who stands to steal the most:
the Minister for Economic Development, Rajiv Banerjee. Most of the
burned-out inhabitants of Goa seem blissfully unaware of the coming
changes--until the strangled body of a child is found floating in the
waves, shattering even the aging Western hippies' view of Goa as an
innocent paradise.With his American lover, newspaper reporter
Annie Ginnaro, Sansi sets out for a luxurious Goan resort, where he and
Annie will pretend to enjoy a much needed rest. But relaxing is the
last thing they will do, as they hack their way through a tangled
jungle of Western dropouts, drugs, money, and murder that has overgrown
around the last refuge of pleasure in India...."[MANN] SETS
ASTOUNDINGLY VIVID SCENES OF A DECADENT CITY in the throes of life, the
better to draw sharp, grim portraits of characters flirting with
bizarre forms of death."--The New York Times Book Review"CHILLING. . .TRULY
SHOCKING. . .An intriguing look at another culture--one where the best and the
worst of East and West meet."--San Francisco Examiner
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