Anuja Chauhan: The Zoya Factor
deepad sent around this book to see how it would read to non-Indian audiences and I am very happy to be a part of this experiment.
What is the book about, now? Zoya Solanki works in advertising and during an ad shoot has breakfast with the players on India's cricket team, who then win a match. This repeats a couple of times. When the younger players learn that she was born at the exact time of India's winning the World Cup in 1983, they start to believe she is their lucky charm. In a controversial move, she is invited to accompany the team to the World Cup in Australia. Trouble is, the very attractive captain, Nikhil Khoda, is not on board with the lucky charm plan but mysteriously keeps wooing her...
The book is an entertaining romance; I really enjoyed both the lucky charm and the Nikhil/Zoya plot aspects. Chauhan's writing is very funny, even though I think I missed about 50% of the jokes. Hindi dialogue is interspersed throughout the book and of course, I am sure I misunderstood a lot of the cultural references. But now I feel marginally informed about the Standing in thee Society and also the practice of putting gobar on someone's hoardings ;-) i. e. putting shit on advertising boards of disrespected politicians or celebrities.
Thanks to
deepad for organizing the book's travel!