This Garden of Weeds

Salil Gupta and his daughter Nupur belong to a Delhi business family that has no acquaintance with art. He wants to collect art, she wants to be a curator. But the art world is a walled garden that does not admit outsiders easily. Father and daughter shake up the auction business and make up a reality show set around the lives of chosen artists. It carries a million-dollar prize. Who can resist the lure of big money for wilful behaviour on camera? The Mumbai art scene takes centre stage. In contention for the prize are a bohemian artist whose drug-filled existence fuels her art, an artist duo out to engineer a social upheaval, a performance artist who is a career rebel, and the daughter of a framer fighting conservative forces. As the contest heats up with participants going all out to win the million dollars, matters hurtle to a fatal denouement. A tart-sweet delight of a novel, This Garden of Weeds is a witty and expert defenestration of the incestuous art world.

Categories: Literature & Fiction