A Tale of Two Obedient Fathers: Akhil Sharma Returns to the Scene of the Crime

Akhil Sharma’s decision to revisit and revise his debut novel An Obedient Father (2000) more than two decades after its original publication has resulted in a peculiar critical conundrum, two identically titled books depicting child rape and incest largely from the perspective of the perpetrator. However, despite the author’s assertion that his 2022 version shifts narrative attention from its male protagonist to his female victims, a comparative analysis of the two texts shows that this shift is at best incomplete, as the revised version continues to challenge the reader’s sympathetic imagination with its thoroughly psychologized and uncomfortably humanized antihero. Using Microsoft Word’s Compare functionality (also known as legal blackline), this essay analyzes selected passages from each version of An Obedient Father to ascertain whether the revision delivers on Sharma’s stated intention. Because of the author’s decision to “embrace” rather than “manage the confusion” that existed in the original text and because of the heavily revised ending, the new version is, if anything, an even more disturbing narrative and one that offers far more questions than answers.