Banking, between the lines

An arcane subject like banking has been brought to life in 'Roller Coaster' with all the elements of a fictional account-the characters, drama, and intrigue

Roller Coaster: An Affair with Banking

Author: Tamal Bandyopadhyay

Publisher: Jaico Books

Pages: 314

Price: Rs 499

It’s hard to find an exciting tale about banking. References from literature are few. Phileas Fogg begins his journey in Around the World in Eighty Days following a bank theft that turns into a bet. Charles Dickens mentioned a few episodes related to banking frauds in his weekly journal Household Words, the most famous being the one in which Richard Vaughan tried to eat fake bank notes to destroy evidence.

Banking doesn’t attract much literary attention because of the arcane nature of the work. Tamal Bandyopadhyay, though,