Upamanyu Chatterjee

Agastya Sen, the hero of English, August, is a child of the Indian elite. His father is the governor of Bengal. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. He himself has secured a position in the most prestigious and exclusive of Indian government agencies, the IAS. Agastya's first assignment is to the town of Madna, buried deep in the provinces. There he meets a range of eccentrics worthy of a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Agastya himself smokes a lot of pot and drinks a lot of beer, finds ingenious excuses to shirk work, loses himself in sexual fantasies about his boss's wife, and makes caustic asides to coworkers and friends. And yet he is as impatient with his own restlessness as he is with anything else. Agastya's effort to figure out a place in the world is faltering and fraught with comic missteps. Chatterjee's novel, an Indian Catcher in the Rye with a wild humor and lyricism that are all its own, is at once spiritual quest and a comic revue. It offers a glimpse an Indian reality that proves no less compelling than the magic realism of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy.

an Indian story

English, August

Agastya Sen, known to friends by the English name August, is a child of the Indian elite. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job, which takes him to Madna - a town with the highest temperatures in India - deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies. What to do? Get stoned, shirk work, collapse in the heat, stare at the ceiling. Dealing with the locals turns out to be much easier than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India.

English, August: an Indian Story

"First published by Faber and Faber Limited, 1988"--Title page verso.

An Indian Story

Weight Loss

A 25 anni Agastya pensa di sapere tutto sull'India. In fondo non si è mai mosso da lù, ha generazioni di bengalesi purosangue alle spalle e suo padre è uno stimato governatore. Perfino il nome che porta, ispirato dal Ramayana, è la quintessenza dell'indianità. Che poi gli amici lo abbiano sempre chiamato English - l'Inglese - è tutt'altro affare. Con il suo inseparabile Marco Aurelio, i dischi di Ella Fitzgerald, il jogging mattutino e un costante male di vivere tipicamente occidentale, Agastya non sospetta cosa sta per succedergli, quando ottiene un posto da funzionario nello Ias, la pachidermica macchina amministrativa indiana. Niente di ciò che ha vissuto o letto lo ha preparato a Madna, il rovente paesino del Sud dove viene spedito per il tirocinio. Improvvisamente circondato da una folla di burocrati, svitati e perditempo, alla mercè di un cuoco misteriosamente incapace di comprendere l'elementare concetto della bollitura dell'acqua, stremato da una canicola tropicale e da un muro impenetrabile di spleen, Agastya scopre poco alla volta che quasi nulla di ciò che credeva di sapere sull'India - o su stesso - corrisponde al vero.

Ritratto del funzionario indiano da giovane

In This Sequel To Upamanyu Chatterjee S Debut Novel, English, August, Agastya Sen Older, Funnier, More Beleaguered, Almost Endearing And Some Of His Friends Are Back. Comic And Kafkaesque, The Mammaries Of The Welfare State Is A Masterwork Of Satire By A Major Writer At The Height Of His Powers.

The Mammaries of the Welfare State

Nirip on the cusp of fifty is not happy with his life. His father is an ogre and his mother a witch. He is not happy with that either. His sort of half-sister is a sort of half-man. A really close relative turns out to be a serial killer. He is not happy sleeping with his chauffeur's wife. Neither is she. Then, for his amusement, his father arranges a cricket match between rival dacoit teams in which some of the players are shot dead. Who could be happy in such circumstances? Days before his fiftieth birthday, with Nirip still wondering whether he should go ahead and have himself kidnapped so that he can make some money, he discovers, most unexpectedly, that he is not the biological child of his parents. Witty, macabre, sad, cruel, unforgivingly insightful, Fairy Tales at Fifty is part adventure tale, part nightmare, part acid trip---and throughout a triumph of fiction.

Fairy Tales at Fifty

A fascinating portrayal of life in an Indian middle-class family by the best-selling author of English, August Upamanyu Chatterjee's second novel brilliantly recreates life in an average Indian family at the end of the twentieth century. Jamun, the central character, is a young man, unmarried, adrift. He stays away from his family, which comprises his parents, Urmila and Shyamanand, his elder brother, Burfi, his sister-in-law, Joyce, his two nephews and the children's ayah. Jamun returns to the family when his mother is hospitalized. Once there, he decides to stay on until one of his ailing parent dies. He barely admits to himself that there is another, probably stronger, reason for his extended stay in the family home— an old friend Kasturi, now married and pregnant, who has returned to the city (that she associates with Jamun) . . . Flitting back and forth in time and space, and writing in a language of unsurpassed richness and power, Upamanyu Chatterjee presents a funny, bitterly accurate and vivid portrait of the awesome burden of family ties.

The Last Burden

In this sequel to Upamanyu Chatterjee's debut novel, English, August, Agastya Sen— older, funnier, more beleaguered, almost endearing— and some of his friends are back. Comic and Kafkaesque, The Mammaries of the Welfare State is a masterwork of satire by a major writer at the height of his powers.

Innocent and unremarkable, but for his near crippling obsessions with sex and running, Bhola goes through life falling for all the wrong people. At School, he lusts indiscriminately after his teachers, both male and female, and is equally attracted to eunuchs. While in college, he has vaguely demeaning affairs with his landlady, and a vegetable vendor-cum-nurse and her husband. Later, he marries (a woman with a voice like liquid gold), fathers a daughter and suspects he is close to balance and beauty. Then his past catches up with him. Upamanyu Chatterjee’s genius for black humour and the absurd has never been more compelling than in this unforgettable portrait of a lost life.

In This Sequel To Upamanyu Chatterjee S Debut Novel, English, August, Agastya Sen-Older, Funnier, More Beleaguered, Almost Endearing-And Some Of His Friends Are Back. Comic And Kafkaesque, The Mammaries Of The Welfare State Is A Masterwork Of Satire By A Major Writer At The Height Of His Powers.

Upamanyu Chatterjee

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