The book is a tragic-comic account of the narrator's (fictional?) trip from Moscow to Petuschki. The first half of the book isoften very funny. The narrator's biggest worry is how to get his next drink - in fact, I don't think I've ever read a book in which anyone ever had that many drinks. And the characters drink everything: they even mix their own cocktails adding for example petrol or nail polish!
The book also talks a lot about the drinking habits of several authors (mainly Russian ones). It also describes what the characters do when they are drunk, for example declare war on Norway and other strange things.
In the second half - when the narrator and his fellow travellers are already very drunk - the characters started to philosophize a bit too much in my opinion (something I also don't like about drunk people in real life). At one point the narrator is so drunk that he doesn't know if it's night or day or if he's going from Moscow to Petuschki or vice versa. This second part spoiled my reading experience a bit. The first part of the book I'd have rated 4 stars but the second part (unfortunately) pulled the rating down to 3 stars.

The God of Small Language is written in an incredibly beautiful language: you have the feeling that you are actually feeling and smelling India, the most vivid images come to mind.
The language is also the thing that kept me reading this book: the story is ok and has some interesting aspects. But all in all I didn't care much for it. You learn about Sophie Mol's death very early in the book and from then on the story drags a bit on. It took me much longer to read this book than expected.
The language alone would have been worth almost 6 stars, but with the story I could "only" rate it 4 stars.