Adaptation of Screenplay to Novel - Ghostwriter Wanted

SCOPE OF WORK: CONVERSION OF COMPLETED SCREENPLAY INTO NOVEL - APPROX.100-150 PAGES OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, LOCATION DETAILS, CONTEXTUAL FACTS, ETC.

* MUST HAVE CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE OF INDIA / SOUTH ASIA

SYNOPSIS FOLLOWS:

MONEY MEN

A Novel by Asad Sultan

In the heady stock market of modern day India, what goes up also comes down. Anise, who represents an American investment bank in Mumbai, takes on a mandate from Karan Kapoor, an ambitious entrepreneur who doesn’t always play by the rules, in a roller-coaster ride of heady success that burns out just as spectacularly when the markets crash in the financial crisis of 2008. What results is a contemporary tale of hubris and downfall in contemporary India, seen through the eyes of a veteran insider.

Money Men is an insider’s story of financial double-dealing. Asad Sultan has had many years of experience working in this area and his novel goes into the details of financial deal-making with all the bull, bravado and jargon of the black art.

He tells the story of Anise, an honest broker, being slowly sucked into inside trading and price manipulation scams, by the sharp operator Karan. The dream of power and privilege that Karan presents as a possibility is constantly resisted but when all others are falling under Karan’s spell, Anise can do little but close one eye to his methods, and hope that the end product will be beneficial to all.

The novel tells the story through the interaction of men in suits, gathering in the offices and nightclubs of Mumbai and the playgrounds of Goa. The dialogue is matter of fact and skirts over the realities of the world in which they live. The background of poverty-infested Mumbai appears a million miles away. The actual production of goods and services is seen as irrelevant to the value of stocks. The making of money is everything and relationships are purely a means to that end. In business, there are no friends, says Karan, yet he claims he is a true friend when it suits him.

The emotional emptiness of Anise’s existence is highlighted in the subtext. Money and the deal is everything and seemingly all engrossing. There are girls, but they are interchangeable and happily swap partners as dictated by Karan’s business requirements. There are drugs but somehow even they have little effect other than making people who feel little, “feel nothing”.

The story makes this cold and calculating world emotionally satisfying for the reader. The sub-text and the realistic evocation of the time and place in which the action unfolds are richly portrayed capturing the nuances of fleeting emotions, doubts, hidden agendas, and the ironic juxtaposition of all this with a world where none of the money ever goes.

India’s infrastructure shortcomings, and huge gap between the rich and poor, will always be there in the background of a financial system that has divorced itself from the economic basics of providing food, shelter and cultural satisfactions. Empty half-finished office buildings, uncrowded shopping malls in a crowded city, slums for the many and secure apartments for the few, all indicate a hollowness in the financial system of the moment. If your life is designed to avoid contact with the reality around you, it is not surprising that disaster can overtake you.

Book Writing Ghostwriting

Project ID: #6181229

About the project