Book Review - The Class of 83 by S. Hussain Zaidi (Rating *****)
Hussain Zaidi earned his stripes as an investigative journalist, and later as a non-fiction crime writer, with the stories that featured in Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia. But it also came with the criticism that he was writing only about the Muslim mafia and not Maharashtrian gangsters. He followed up Dongri to Dubai with detailed profiles of Arun Gawli, Chhota Rajan and Amar Nayak, which would go on to feature in his 2014 book, Byculla to Bangkok. Criticism followed him again (that he was only writing about the underworld), and Zaidi was determined to pacify his critics; the result was writing about terrorism. A third challenge presented itself when the ex-journalist was approached by publishers, who observed that he had not written a book about police officers and the police force. This piqued his interest, and encouragement from his protégé Bilal Siddiqi (author of Bard of Blood, The Kiss Of Life, The Stardust Affair) prompted him to begin work on a possible pro
