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The Circle of Reason (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The boy had no sooner arrived, people said afterwards, than Balaram had run into the house to look for the Claws..." (more)
Key Phrases: Bhudeb Roy, Abu Fahl, Hajj Fahmy (more...)

3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Hardcover Available from these sellers. Published June 15, 1986	Hardcover, June 15, 1986	--	$50.00	$8.12
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

A saga of flight and pursuit, this novel chronicles the adventures of Alu, a young master weaver who is wrongly suspected of being a terrorist. Chased from Bengal to Bombay and on through the Persian Gulf to North Africa by a bird-watching police inspector, Alu encounters along the way a cast of characters as various and as colorful as the epithets with which the author adorns them. The reader is drawn into their lives by incidents tender and outrageousand all compellingly told. Ghosh is as natural a weaver of words as Alu is of cloth, deftly interlacing humor and wisdom to produce a narrative tapestry of surpassing beauty. Very highly recommended. L.M. Lewis, Social Science Dept., Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

In a first novel dense with incident and compelling characters, Ghosh (an Indian sociologist) spins the transcontinental adventures of Alu, a silent and sensitive young man with a gigantic potato-shaped head. Orphaned at eight, Alu arrives in the small village of Lalpukur (near Calcutta) to live with his childless aunt and uncle. Alu soon devotes himself to his uncle Balaram, a local teacher, caliper-wielding phrenologist and student of the Life of Pasteur. When Bhudeb Roy, the principal of the school where Balaram teaches, decides to close the school and go into politics, Balaram opens the Pasteur School of Reason, teaching weaving as well as more classical subjects. Obsessed with the school and a pet project (making the village antiseptic with carbolic acid), Balaram accidentally slides into a noisy and destructive feud with ex-principal Bhudeb Roy, who's also a police informer. After a resulting conflagration kills all his loved ones, Alu is labeled a dangerous extremist and must go on the lam. He flees to Al-Ghazira, where he teams up with a madam named Zindi and an extended family of businessmen, laborers and whores, and attempts to realize some of his late uncle's ideals (Alu's vision is of a moneyless society). But he's being pursued by a bird-loving Indian police officer, Jyoti Das, and this precipitates disaster. Soon Alu and Zindi must take off again, up the Red Sea and into the desert, where they eventually forge a peace with their pursuer and slide into a peace of their own. Alu's journey - part flight, part quest for a reconciliation between tradition and reason - is told with a well-tuned blend of wit and lyricism. But best here are the generously digressive characterizations - the result is an exuberant traffic jam of real people clinging to their mundane but noble goals (the obsessed Balaram is particularly memorable). A complex, often magical debut. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Mariner Books (May 3, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618329625
ISBN-13: 978-0618329625
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #283,244 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#40 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Indian

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
The boy had no sooner arrived, people said afterwards, than Balaram had run into the house to look for the Claws. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Bhudeb Roy, Abu Fahl, Hajj Fahmy, Shombhu Debnath, Forid Mian, Professor Samuel, Mast Ram, Goat's Arse, Hajji Musa, Durban Tailoring House, Middle Parting, Old Fort, Jeevanbhai Patel, Hem Narain Mathur, Presidency College, Murali Charan Mishra, Cosmic Boson, Life of Pasteur, Thin Lips, Union Secretariat, Virat Singh, Head Constable, High Court, Adil the Blue, Japanese Miracle

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 6 books:

The Hungry Tide: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh in Front Matter, and Back Matter
Life of Pasteur by Rene Vallery-Radot on page 28, and page 46
The Glass Palace: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh in Front Matter, and Back Matter
The Shadow Lines: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh in Front Matter, and Back Matter
In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale by Amitav Ghosh in Front Matter

See all 6 books this book cites

20 books cite this book:

Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain by Peter van der Veer on page 134, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Colonial and Postcolonial Literature by Elleke Boehmer on page 227, page 235, and Back Matter
Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (Opus) by Elleke Boehmer on page 223, and page 230
The Shadow Lines: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh in Front Matter, and Back Matter
The Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory) by Nyla Ali Khan on page 69, and Back Matter

See all 20 books citing this book

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	42% buy the item featured on this page: The Circle of Reason 3.0 out of 5 stars (2) $11.97
	17% buy The Shadow Lines: A Novel 4.5 out of 5 stars (30) $11.20
	16% buy Sea of Poppies 4.1 out of 5 stars (85) $10.20
	13% buy The Glass Palace: A Novel 4.0 out of 5 stars (81) $10.20

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Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A well woven story., July 7, 2009

By	Dick Johnson (Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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I became a fan of Ghosh after reading "Sea of Poppies." That was his most recent novel and "Circle of Reason" was his first. The two books cannot be directly compared - they're about different times and places.

This book, though a little rough, is very well written for a first novel. Typically Indian, the book has tons of detail and takes a while to make any point. What is untypical, though, is that you don't have to have a glossary at hand. There are a few words from Hindi, but compared with most books by Indian authors, this is amazingly "English" throughout.

The book is about the people. They wander from India to the Middle East and on to Africa. Their lives and relationships move the story along. Well developed, there is quite a mix brought together by the events.

I kept turning pages from start to finish. I don't think you should pass on this one just because it's not as polished as his later books. It's well worth your time.

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Keep Google handy, April 18, 2009

By	R. Coderre (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After hearing the author, Amitav Ghosh, in a National Public Radio interview, I was eager to read one of his books. I chose to start with 'The Circle of Reason'. The phrase which best describes the experience for me is "could have been". The story could have been compelling for non-asian readers (I'm American), except for the regional vocabulary. The book is littered with clothing, descriptions, places, holidays, and foods that a native of India would probably recognize, but I was totally at sea. For example, in the book, a man pulls up his lunghi in front of a woman and shocks her. Was it his socks? His shirt? A body part? Whatever it was, is it considered rude to pull it up in front of a woman? I had to Google the term to find out it was a kind of skirt worn by men and women in India. I Googled dozens of terms during the reading of the book.

The plot could have been more exciting, but there wasn't enough drama. The book had the potential to be a kind of Indian 'Les Miserable', but instead meandered, concentrating on this inconsequential character and then that one. Meanwhile, the pursuer seemed to be perfunctory in his chase and the pursued didn't seem to be trying that hard to escape.

Perhaps in his later works Mr. Ghosh did, or will, consider his international readers by including some unobtrusive descriptions that explain the regional terms. For example, if I were to write that my grandmother enjoyed cooking in a spider, knowing that's a New England term, I'd mention that a spider is a large frying pan.

So, in summary, if you are very familiar with Indian culture, 'The Circle of Reason' may easily hold your interest. For other readers, see the title of this review.

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