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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Chatterjee's slacker bildungsroman, first published in India in 1988 and set during that decade, tells of a privileged young man's year of living languorously. Agastya Sen, nicknamed "August" for his Anglophile tendencies, is the urbane, aimless son of a respected government official. After college he enters the elite Indian Administrative Service and is posted to the remote provincial village of Madna. Without conviction or ambition, "interested in nothing," he only wants to "crush the restlessness in his mind." Brutal heat, tedium, insomnia and the absurdities of his job—compounded by a daily regimen of marijuana—only add fuel to his dissolution. Between feeble attempts at learning the ins and outs of district administration from his appointed mentor, Srivastav, a hilarious popinjay, Agastya reduces his routine to a joyless cycle of pot smoking, masturbation and nocturnal distance running. This study in lassitude rambles on at a pace that reflects the rhythms of the insouciant main character's life, but Chatterjee (The Last Burden), himself an IAS officer, creates a comic, entertaining portrayal of an administrator's life in the sticks. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From The New Yorker
A best-seller when it was first published, in India in 1988, this satiric novel chronicles the reluctant coming of age of a privileged young man who has just entered the prestigious Indian Administrative Service. Posted to a small town deep in the interior, he finds himself a foreigner in his own country, wary of cholera, defenseless against mosquitoes, and shocked by the sight of a tribal woman: "They exist, he shrieked silently, outside arty films about tribal exploitation and agrarian reform." In revolt, he sneaks out of meetings, pretends to be the son of Antarctic explorers, and smokes copious amounts of pot. He's an avatar of the Western slacker: overeducated, bored, plagued with doubts, and incapable of action. Still, Chatterjee's story is uniquely Indian, as he plumbs his hero's fear of being "just one more urban Indian bewitched by America's hard sell in the Third World."
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
Chatterjee's slacker bildungsroman, first published in India in 1988 and set during that decade, tells of a privileged young man's year of living languorously. Agastya Sen, nicknamed "August" for his Anglophile tendencies, is the urbane, aimless son of a respected government official. After college he enters the elite Indian Administrative Service and is posted to the remote provincial village of Madna. Without conviction or ambition, "interested in nothing," he only wants to "crush the restlessness in his mind." Brutal heat, tedium, insomnia and the absurdities of his job—compounded by a daily regimen of marijuana—only add fuel to his dissolution. Between feeble attempts at learning the ins and outs of district administration from his appointed mentor, Srivastav, a hilarious popinjay, Agastya reduces his routine to a joyless cycle of pot smoking, masturbation and nocturnal distance running. This study in lassitude rambles on at a pace that reflects the rhythms of the insouciant main character's life, but Chatterjee (The Last Burden), himself an IAS officer, creates a comic, entertaining portrayal of an administrator's life in the sticks. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From The New Yorker
A best-seller when it was first published, in India in 1988, this satiric novel chronicles the reluctant coming of age of a privileged young man who has just entered the prestigious Indian Administrative Service. Posted to a small town deep in the interior, he finds himself a foreigner in his own country, wary of cholera, defenseless against mosquitoes, and shocked by the sight of a tribal woman: "They exist, he shrieked silently, outside arty films about tribal exploitation and agrarian reform." In revolt, he sneaks out of meetings, pretends to be the son of Antarctic explorers, and smokes copious amounts of pot. He's an avatar of the Western slacker: overeducated, bored, plagued with doubts, and incapable of action. Still, Chatterjee's story is uniquely Indian, as he plumbs his hero's fear of being "just one more urban Indian bewitched by America's hard sell in the Third World."
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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20
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- When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel (South Asian Studies) by Bishnupriya Ghosh on 14 pages
- Bombay--London--New York by Amitava Kumar on 7 pages
- Bombay--London--New York by Amitava Kumar on 6 pages
- Colonial Karma: Self, Action, and Nation in the Indian English Novel by Josna E. Rege on page 125, page 126, and Back Matter
- Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (Opus) by Elleke Boehmer on page 198, page 201, and Back Matter
See all 20 books citing this book