The Rozabal Line by Sanghi Ashwin

About the Book

A cardboard box is found on a shelf of a London library. When the mystified librarian opens it, she screams before she falls unconscious to the floor. Within the labyrinthine recesses of the Vatican, a beautiful assassin swears she will eliminate all who do not believe in her twisted credo.

An elite army of thirteen calling itself the Lashkar-e-Talatashar has scattered around the globe. The fate of its members curiously resembles that of Christ and his Apostles. Their agenda is Armageddon.

A Hindu astrologer spots a conjunction of the stars and nods to himself in grim realization of the end of the world. In Tibet, a group of Buddhist monks searchs for a reincarnation, much in the way their ancestors searched Judea for the Son of God. In strife-torn Kashmir, a tomb called Rozabal holds the key to a riddle that arises in Jerusalem and gets answered at Vaishno Devi.

In The Rozabal Line, a thriller swirling between continents and centuries, Ashwin Sanghi traces a pattern that curls backward to the violent birth of religion itself.

Indiaplaza Editorial Review :

In hindsight, perhaps one the of mistakes the publishers made while marketing The Rozabal Line by Ashwin Sanghi when it was first launched in 2008 was to promote it as India’s answer to The Da Vinci Code. The Rozabal Line has many similarities to the Dan Brown global best-seller but it is not a Da Vinci Code and this is meant as a compliment.

Dan Bown set in motion a whole new genre of historical fiction (faction if you may) by combining several historical myths and legends, throwing in a few conspiracy theories and then mixing what we call the masala. Many authors tried replicating this process thereafter with (pun unintended) mixed results.

Sanghi attempts the same in a manner of speaking and the end result is a lot more over the top.

The base theory of the book is that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross but survived the crucifixion and then travelled to Kashmir in India along with Mary Magdalene. Thereafter, he lived in India and that his bloodline survives in Kashmir and India.

The real masala in the book is not about this myth but the introduction of Karma and re-birth; hypnotism which takes people back to their previous births (and the future as well), Japanese assassins, Indian astrologers, the Lashkar-e-Toiba, FBI and the American Presidents, Opus Dei, The Illuminati and lots more to create a pot-boiler that is racy and gripping, which is exactly why the book holds its own and does not require any comparison with Da Vinci Code.

Where the book falters a bit is in the execution. Ashwin Sanghi’s style is to write short paragraphs of incidents happening not just across countries and continents but also across centuries. So, you can expect the same page to have three paragraphs each set in India, Jerusalem, Egypt, Kashmir from anywhere between 3000 BC and 2012 AD, take your pick. It takes a while to get used to this jerkiness, but once you are over this, you can settle down to a fast read.

There are a whole lot of references to websites and books at the end which are supposed to bolster the fiction in the book. Depending on your mood, you can check each of them at the appropriate mentions or simply ignore them. We did both – checked the first hundred and then decide the books works equally without the interruptions.

And yes, the first page makes for a most intriguing start.

We are also happy to showcase below a piece on the book by the author Ashwin Sanghi himself, exclusively for Indiaplaza customers.