1There?s a nip of nonfiction about Rahul Bhattacharya?s The Sly Company of People Who Care (Farrar Straus Giroux, $26). It reads like vintage Granta on speed. Gooroo, the Indian narrator, hunts dia�monds, eats deer curry and tells Carib�bean tales of such loony specificity that we don?t dare doubt him. (?I returned to the Corentyne, and here to my great regret I missed a grand bank heist by no more than ten minutes.?) Like the No. 72 Sita Sita bus that stops every time a passenger buys a grenade or fish pie, the novel makes accidental detours through Guyana with waggish tricksters, street fighters and barflies. These fist-bumping, teeth-sucking, dread-talking men are matey Rasta philosophizers one minute, thieves and mutilators the next. Guyanese ?riddims? of garbled syntax and slang slide over ethnic slurs, scams and general skankiness. The narrator travels with adorable Jankey to Venezuela before their adventure peters out in budget-busting prettification and smuggled cocaine. A soca-soaked picture emerges ? kiskadees, whitey trees, married-man pork, rotting wooden houses on stilts, chutney and zinc in the air ? all ?mud and fruit, race and crime.? Canal-laying, sugar-cane-planting Indian and African slaves and chili-and-brine-whiplashing Dutch masters of the past have given way to gangsters, dictators, corrupt officials and slimy bandit-pandits in ?today daynage.? But ganja-smoking, batty-shaking locals still dream big: ?They thought they could do anything, turn flimstar, fly fighter jet .?.?. open casino in Brazil.? For all its pathos, bravado and charm, ?This was Guyana. Nobody touch she.? Yeahman. Bhattacharya?s voice is thick with bizarre humor, poetic pidgin and images lush with faraway magic.
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