The Sacred Games softcover design is more film noir than South Asian lit. The genre touches are subtle: a bindi, a sideways Mughal arch. Lit fic authors like Vikram Chandra and Salman Rushdie have, by and large, escaped the mango-henna cover treatment.

But the softcover gets a glossary — Chandra succumbed — and some cheesy supplemental material. That’s what the P.S. stands for in the lower corner. P.S. I contain advertising.

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