Q and A

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Q and A
Author	Vikas Swarup
Country	India
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Pages	361 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-7432-6747-8

Q and A is the first novel by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat.

Set in India, it tells the story of Ram Mohammad Thomas, a poor young waiter who becomes the biggest quiz-show winner in history, only to be sent to jail on accusations that he cheated.

Narrated in the first person, the novel then follows the life of the young waiter as he explains to his sympathetic lawyer, Smita Shah, just how he managed to answer twelve random questions, by pure luck.

As he says, "Well, wasn't I lucky they only asked those questions to which I knew the answers?". He tells her how by drawing from the experiences of his own short, yet turbulent and sometimes cruel life he, a poor, young waiter, managed to answer the twelve questions that led him to the jackpot. [1]

It has sold translation rights in 32 languages, including French, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Turkish, Icelandic, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Serbian, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Indonesian, Bhasa Thai, Japanese, Hebrew and Portuguese. It is now being made into a radio play, a stage musical and a feature film. It won South Africa's Boeke Prize 2006.[2]

Ram's and Shankar's code
At the end of the novel Ram is nearly caught by the police yet escapes by pretending he has lost his marbles. In reply to the police officer's questions he merely talks gibberish, which, upon looking more closely, turns out to be in code. Here is the code Vikas Swarup has thought up for his characters to hide their words behind, the capital letters being the letters used in the text:

With the help of this code you can translate sentences like "Ztyjoz hz? Q oxqa ukj xnz xi qaqkp" of Ram's encounter with the police as:"Excuse me? I said you are an idiot."

code	real letter
A	d
B	?
C	g
D	h
E	n
F	k
G	l
H	m
I	n
J	u
K	o
L	p
M	?
N	r
O	s
P	t
Q	i
R	v
S	w
T	x
U	y
V	?
W	b
X	a
Y	c
Z	e