Pitted against Scandinavian crime fiction, which is having a long season, Mr Majestic—the Tout of Bengaluru, is Bollywood to European arthouse. And no, not the ‘meaningful’ multiplex cinema of today either, filmed in shades of blue and bleak, but gloriously, unabashedly Technicolor with full-on frontal lighting, over-the-top escapades and sheer joy seeping out of every frame, as summed up in Paul Fernandes’ cheeky cover art. Zac O’Yeah—Swedish by birth, incidentally, and Bangalorean by choice—casts a droll eye on everything familiar to the urban Indian, and a lot that escapes him entirely, and wrings out a novel that’s not quite like anything done before in the English language.