Blog Tour: Hotel Arcadia – Sunny Singh

A terrorist siege in a luxury hotel. Among the victims, two survivors…

Sam is a war photographer, famous for her hauntingly beautiful pictures of the dead. After a particularly gruelling assignment she has checked into the hotel, hoping to unwind with a few days of solitude.

Abhi, the hotel manager, is desperate to keep the guests safe. He never wanted to be a hero; he just wants to avoid disappointing his father and brother any more than he has already. But when gun-wielding terrorists run amok through the hotel, and five-year-old Billy is found alive under the bodies of his parents, Abhi and Sam know it will take all they have to protect him from the mounting violence. If they make it out alive, none of them will ever be the same.

Published for the first time in paperback, Singh’s explosive thriller has lost none of its topicality, exploring how acts of terrorism are reported by the media and the role of photography in shaping the news. 

 Described as “an intelligent person’s Die Hard,” this gripping story of two unlikely heroes, captures the extraordinary capacity of humans to retain compassion in extreme circumstances. 

 

SUNNY SINGH is a London-based writer, journalist and academic. She is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: Nani’s Book of Suicides, Krishna’s Eyes and Hotel Arcadia, which was first published by Quartet in 2015.  She has written several books of non-fiction and is cofounder of the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. Her pioneering study of a study of the Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan (2017) was published by BFI Bloomsbury Film Stars Series. Her book on Indian cinema titled A Bollywood State of Mind was published in October 2023 by Footnote Press.

 

Sunny Singh on the inspiration for HOTEL ARCADIA:

‘I spent over two decades researching, not only terrorism and terrorists but also photography and its ethics, inspired by brilliant war photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa and Marie Colvin, and conflicts in Vietnam, Guatemala and Syria, and back in time beyond WWII.

Despite the narrative driver being a terrorist incident, Hotel Arcadia deliberately does not focus on the terrorists. As I went about my research, I realised perpetrators of violence do not interest me, as their motivations, interests and stories are all too often predictable. Instead, I want to portray survivors, and especially those who do not fit our stereotypes of the ‘ideal’ victims.  Sam and Abhi are complex people. They are both vulnerable, damaged and isolated in different yet strangely similar ways. But, brought together by chance and extreme circumstances, they find the courage, resilience and strength they never knew they had.’

My thoughts: told through the perspectives  of two very different people – war photographer Sam and hotel manager Abhi, as they hide from a group of murderous terrorists in the luxury Hotel Arcadia, Sam in her room and Abhi in his office watching on the CCTV. They communicate by phone as Sam sneaks through the corridors to take photos and then to rescue a young boy trapped on another floor. Abhi guiding her with the cameras, monitoring the whereabouts of their hunters, both to keep Sam safe and to let the outside security forces know as they plan their approach.

As the two lost souls make it through the long hours awaiting rescue they bond, leading to Sam making her most daring trip through the corridors. Neither will be the same after this, if they make it safely through.

Intense and utterly gripping, the story rolls between the two characters as they revisit their pasts, Sam thinking about the trips she’s been on, the terrible things she’s seen and feels numb to, her long love affair with David, a man she can never truly have.

Abhi – his family, the complicated relationships he has with his military hero father and soldier brother, his mother a ghostly figure in the background and his lover Dieter, who was also in the hotel when the gunmen arrived and may well now be dead.

The terrifying situation they find themselves in making them odd allies who might otherwise never have confided like this in one another, this bond keeping them both going from one tense moment to the next. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.