Customer Reviews

The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India

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This book really got to me. I'm American, but I have traveled to India many times over the past 12 years and have been actually living in Delhi for the past two years.

This book made me realize I don't do a lot of critical thinking about what is right under the surface of my day to day experiences. I assume that India's headlong rush forward is a good thing which everyone is happy to see coming. People happy to leave their dusty villages with no future to come to Delhi and get their mobile phones and scooters. The author does a fabulous job laying out the real underpinnings of this game.

I thought the book was extremely well written and I was carried along without effort. I acknowledge the other reviewer who suggests some wrap up might be in order - but on the other hand maybe the author had the ending consciously in mind. What does this all mean? Is this new India good or bad? If you could change something about it what would it be? Is India moving to a better or worse place? Will this all end well or poorly?

This book is most easily read by people with some awareness of or interest in India.....but in the end it is just a great book. I would love to meet the author if he is ever in Delhi.

This is a remarkable book. It takes the reader through five narratives of contemporary India, painting a vivid portrait of a country in transition. I'm really impressed with the clarity with which Deb accomplishes this and would rate this book as far more informative (and written in much better prose) than any other book about the ongoing socioeconomic transformation in India. It's not nostalgic, it doesn't romanticize the country or pay tribute to any specific cities: it focuses on the people (an impressive variety of them), not the places or the practices.

(Perhaps this was not the author's intent, but if you're planning to do business in India, or have been assigned to travel there on work, read the first two essays, they give you a good idea of the rich tapestry of Indian aspirations. While I grew up in India, I have lived in the United states for over 15 years, and although I travel to India every couple of months for work, it is hard to see the range of what this book tells you even if you are a frequent visitor.)

The nod to F. Scott Fitzgerald goes beyond his choice of title: the first narrative draws explicit parallels between Arindam Chaudhari and Gatsby, the nouveau rich outsider with a questionable academic past. But Deb is not simply more readable than Fitzgerald, he also rises to the challenge of describing a far more complex society, and one that is going through fairly radical change. It is hard to peg this book as being of a specific "type". There's a mix of relevant history and astute social observation, and a good range of context. Perhaps it is a very readable ethnography, one that anyone interested in India should read. I couldn't put it down once I started it. Then I read it again.

postscript: I discovered earlier this week while in India that the version being sold there does not contain the first chapter "The Great Gatsby", which has been removed following a civil case filed by Chaudhuri's IIPM. (It was published in the magazine "Caravan" back in February 2011.

This book is a very interesting and eye-opening account of various aspects of life in India. As an IT professional, I have encountered many Indians in my career, and I was curious to read more about the country and its culture. "The Beautiful and the Damned" gave me a great picture of that, describing both the very rich and the completely destitute. The stories recounted by the author are quite descriptive, something I really enjoyed. This book did evoke some powerful emotions, including both sadness and anger at those responsible for the horrible corruption the author describes.

My only issue with this book was the writing. I found it difficult to follow at times, and I think the author could have been more proactive in describing basic parts of Indian culture for the rather un-enlightened. I would have enjoyed it more if he had more of the raw dialogue that he had with people, as he put in the last chapter when he meets Esther.

Furthermore, I would have included a final chapter, where he brings all of his encounters to the table, and tells us, as an Indian, how he sees the future of India. What would he change? How could it be changed? What does the future hold for steel manufacturing and IT outsourcing in India? These are questions I'd love for the author to answer given his very unique insight.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in India, or anyone who has a lot of contact with Indians in their lives as it will definitely provide great context and a deeper understanding of their culture.

The book is about the India that is rapidly changing and the Indians that examplify the changing India. The author has picked great characters that tell the story: call center workers, social activists, tycoons, etc. The themes are hope, aspiration, dislocation, and cynicism. It is a wonderful idea for a book that certainly ought to be of interest to anyone who wants to know about the current state of a vast and complex country (and a dynamic economy)---not as a recitation of statistical facts but as in-depth portraits of people on the ground. However, the writing style is novelistic rather than journalistic. There are many asides and reflection; and these diversions are somewhat repetitive and, after a while, self-evident and even slightly trite. It seems that the author is just a bit too ready to impose his voice rather than artfully letting his subjects tell his own strories, which would have been evocative and engaging even if treated with a light touch. Still a book worth the time; but not a sparkling read because of its pretension to be literature.

This book is a set of stories, each a chapter long, centered on a different character in a different part of India - a rich man in Bangalore, a Manipuri woman working in Delhi, a farmer in Andhra Pradesh, and each story and character give the reader an fresh and finely painted portrait of a different aspect of India today. It's meant as an anecdote to all the optimistic "India is the new superpower" books that have come out recently, a sobering account of the reality of life in India, as seen through the eyes of diverse cast of people. The writing is fluid and engaging. Highly recommended not only for those interested in India but for anyone wanting a view of Asia behind the headlines.

This superbly written and insightful perspective on India today conveys an accurate sense of recent change and persistent challenges. Through the portraits of a rich industrialist, itinerant workers, and young women in Delhi, Deb captures aspects of contemporary life that are often ignored or fleetingly sensed by tourists and occasional visitors to South Asia. He provides three-dimensional portraits that rarely emerge from most commentators and journalists. The people emerge as fully-realized human beings, evoking the reader's interest and, often, sympathy. Anyone who loves India and hopes for its future needs to learn what Deb knows in order to appreciate how best to understand the culture, particularly since it achieved independence. Deb joins Amitav Ghosh and Pankaj Mishra as among the best Indian writers of his generation.
--Michael True

After enjoying this book for myself, I bought a copy through Amazon to give as a gift on a recent trip to India. Since the US edition included the chapter banned in India, this book was well-received!

The book is an intelligent take on current India.