One Night At the Call Centre [Paperback]

Chetan Bhagat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2007

This is a comedy of romance and crossed lines. Six friends are selling home appliances to the US from a call centre in India. Each one has an issue with love. Call agent Sam works right beside the girl who's just dumped him. He's dating someone he can't stand, just to get over her. Esha is just short of becoming a model. Two inches, to be precise. Vroom wants to change the world. Radikha's trying to manage her mother-in-law, and hold down her job. Tonight is Thanksgiving in America, and customers are queueing up to complain about white goods going wrong. On this night of a thousand phone calls, when life couldn't look more dismal, one unique caller gets on the line. And that call is going to change everything ...A romantic comedy of six friends kicking against the system, against their boss, and against each other. Something's got to give ...

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chetan Bhagat lives in Hong Kong and works in investment banking. He is married with young twins. One Night @ the Call Centre is a bestseller in India and is due to be published around the world. The Bollywood blockbuster of his book is to be released later this year. Find out more about Chetan at www.chetanbhagat.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Black Swan (May 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552773867
• ISBN-13: 978-0552773867
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #821,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre Content, April 16, 2008

By 

Annapurna Saripella - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Night At the Call Centre (Paperback)

I happened to buy Chetan Bhagat's One night @ the call center book at a railway station. I should say, that the book had mediocre content and very lame statements about Americans. Comments about the Americans being fat, loud, thick and divorce all the time, and that too said in front of God...and God has no problem with onehuman being demeaning other human beings, was uncalled for.

I am an Indian who has lived in the US for 13 years and recently came back to India. I have seen people abusing their own people here...especially the maids and other low paid workers. I don't think Mr.Bhagat has any clue as to what he was talking about racial abuse. Indians are the world's biggest discriminators and we should clean up our own backyard before mud slinging somebody else's.

Some parts of the book delivered some good humorous comments. To me, the form of narrative was similar to his first book Five Point Someone. I think Mr.Bhagat should stick to what he has experienced first hand and make stories of that.

Good luck and hope for a better performance in your next book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun Book, Could Have Done Without the Preaching Though, July 8, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: One Night At the Call Centre (Paperback)

Chetan Bhagat has written a fun adventure revolving around a group of staff who work in an Indian call centre answering stupid enquiries from Americans on Thanksgiving who can't perform simple tasks with their American (although Bhagat could have used Australia, UK, Europe, all our companies use Indian call centres now) company whitegoods. A unique idea, we get to see the world through the Indian youth' eyes who experience Americans (some racists) who speak down to them even though clearly the callers are less intelligent then they are. Some of these calls are hilarious, Bhagat should have included more.

The author tackles some bigger issues such as how the West treats poor countries like India and how their youth has sold out their country to take on the material items of the west. This book argues the point of how well educated hard working people in one country are worse off than the lazy stupid people in another simply because of where they were born. Chetan Bhagat does write this sort of stuff well without preaching to the reader, as he points out through the a well flowing storyline that these characters are all in the predicaments they are in because of themselves as well not just where they were born.

A few unrealistic occurrences in the plot and I doubt Vroom's solution for the call centre will work. The only major downside is obviously Chetan is a religious man and a passionate one at that. The ending and a middle chapter of the book have unrealistic situations and author uses this book as an opportunity to preach to the reader about his beliefs. Now normally I would recommend just ditching a book that does this despicable act but the rest of the book is high quality and if you know this is going to happen and just roll your eyes at these preaching paragraphs then you'll still enjoy this book. I'll definitely check out other work by this author but if he preaches his beliefs to me again in his next book as well that one will be my last.

Other sensational hilarious behind the scenes of a poorly run company or coping with bully management books are the novels Syrup and Company by Max Barry. The novel Beauty of Truth by Bruno Bouchet and Being Alexander by Nancy Sparling are also must reads.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Uncomfortably anti-American, December 23, 2007

By 

D. Cuming "brightondebs" (Hove, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Night At the Call Centre (Paperback)

I cannot agree more with Sean Burke (previous reviewer). Although I enjoyed some parts of the book I felt the racist comments against Americans were unacceptable. Also, at one point the main character refers to sending "another email to the whites". Could American characters get away with referring to Indians as "blacks"? I don't think so.

I recently spent 5 months in India in Bangalore and, admittedly, anti-white sentiment is widespread. I found people were warned off socializing with me as "white girls" had a reputation as promiscuous and immoral. So, in a way, the book is an accurate account of the people it is trying to portray. The question is whether or not they should be proud of that.

I'm not American and I'm not a big fan of a lot of US foreign policy but a book containing so many sweeping anti-American statements laid out as fact made me incredibly uncomfortable. It is disappointing that so few people seem to feel the same way.