A review by stories_of_the_soul27
The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer by Shrabani Basu

dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

5.0

This is a BRILLIANT piece of work!!! Kudos to Shrabani Basu for bringing this forgotten story to light. Why didn’t this book make noise? Why aren’t more people talking about it or making noise regarding this book? 

  1. The writing of this book is so intricately done. There are so many incidents and characters that needed to be written in just the perfect way so that the readers can judge the characters for themselves. The writer did spell out the racial prejudices faced by the key characters but with the way the book has been written, the reader comes to the same conclusions beforehand. 
  2. Shrabani Basu didn’t go out of her way to build sympathy for the protagonist and neither she had to portray someone as a villain. Her neutral standpoint of writing this book was commendable. 
  3. Kudos to her to bring out the British superiority of not just few people but of many eminent personalities of that time period. Her brilliant way of comparing Eldaji case with another cases going about during that time period brought a lot of perspectives at the front. 
  4. It is a heartbreaking story and I will remember the names of those people who have wronged the Eldaji people throughout their lifetime and never once repented.

George Edalji had been a good man. He deserved the protection of the law as his fellow white countrymen. He was an Englishman too. But racist policemen like Campbell and Anson deemed him a criminal and so did the judges of his case and the British Government. All this people have contributed to the downfall of a good man. I do not, standing in 21st century, still understand racial superiority and discrimination against other races like brown/black/dark skinned people. This book has opened my eyes further regarding how the brown/black/dark skinned people are portrayed in popular media. 
This case has long since being forgotten but  I will remember it and so will others who have read this book.