From a sluggish first half, Solo takes flight to a surreal world. Solo; Rana Dasgupta, HarperCollins, Rs. 395. With Solo , Rana Dasgupta again demonstrates an unusual flair for the short story; for, though Solo is a novel, it is really the self-contained, story-like chapters of the second half of the book that are remarkable. In the latter part, the writing frees itself from an uneasy heavy-handedness that slows down and mars the book’s first part. No doubt the first half is meant to give readers a sense of the sluggish, unrelenting pathos of real life (which does get through), however the structure seems unable to prevent the reading from occasionally becoming a little tedious. But, for a large part of the first half, Solo does read well; a few sharp cuts might have prevented readers from getting a little fed with how long it takes the writer to show us what life means for the 100-year-old, blind Ulrich, sitting alone in his derelict flat and re-membering his own listless past and ...