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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.
Review:
"There are two favorite themes in comic fiction, each the obverse of the other: The good-hearted innocent or Noble Savage who unexpectedly finds himself in the dazzling big city and the urban sophisticate somehow trapped among provincial hicks. On the one hand, 'Candide,' on the other, 'Cold Comfort Farm.' In both cases, the humor arises from incongruity and dislocation, as if a Martian were observing... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) the strange ways of humans. Besides making us laugh (no small thing in itself), such novels compel us to think twice about our own social preconceptions and pretensions. Certainly, this is true of 'English, August,' Upamanyu Chatterjee's affectionate yet unsparing slacker view of modern India. When the pot-smoking, New Delhi-bred, directionless 24-year-old Agastya Sen joins the elite Indian Administrative Service he is posted to Madna, 'the hottest place in India.' While being driven through the town, Agastya looks out at his new home with the eyes of a blase, slightly stoned Gen-Xer: 'On their left was some kind of pond, with thick green water and the heads of contented buffalo. Scores of people, sitting on their haunches, smoking, wandering, gazing at anything moving or at other people. Most were in white dhoti, kurta and Gandhi cap (or was it Nehru cap? wondered Agastya. No, Gandhi cap and Nehru jacket. Or Gandhi jacket and Nehru cap? And Patel vest? And Mountbatten lungi and Rajaji shawl and Tagore dhoti?), some had towels over their heads.' To Agastya — known to his friends as August, or sometimes English — he has been sentenced to the back of beyond. Seemingly overwhelmed by the heat, this slow-moving novel goes on to describe Madna's petty officials, the pretensions and daydreams of its citizens, endless governmental meetings, hilarious dinner parties, much drunkenness and boredom and bureaucracy. To amuse himself when he meets the locals, Agastya makes up stories about his past: He confides to the District Inspector of Land Records that his (nonexistent) wife is a Norwegian Muslim and that his 'parents were in Antarctica, members of the first Indian expedition. Yes, even his mother, she had a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Sorbonne.' To the superintendent of police he casually lets slip that last summer he had climbed Mount Everest. The food everywhere seems inedible. At one meeting at Gandhi Hall he is handed a plate. 'On it were laddus, samosas and green chutney. He could almost hear the chutney say, Hi, my name is cholera, what's yours?' Refusing the food, he explains to the waiter, '"I can't eat anything today. My mother died today." The man looked puzzled. ... "I mean, this is the anniversary of my mother's death, and I fast." For a moment he contemplated adding, "In penance, because I killed her."' In Madna everything is broken or stolen, mosquitoes swarm over one's body, people defecate in the streets. As the days pass, Agastya drifts, dodging his social obligations as he does his office duties. Self-pitying and not especially likable, he nonetheless reveals a sharp eye and ready wit. He neatly sums up his father, a distinguished government minister: 'Life for him was a serious, rather noble business, a blend of Marcus Aurelius and the Reader's Digest.' When asked about his major in college, Agastya truthfully answers, '"English, sir," ... and wished that it had been something more respectable, Physics or Economics or Mathematics or Law, a subject that at least sounded as though one had to study for its exams.' The notoriously sexy walls of Indian temples, he notes disingenuously, 'were covered with intricately carved figures of different sizes, all of whom seemed to be having a good time.' Most novels progress, but this one simply chronicles an ongoing anomie and spiritual restlessness. When an elderly acquaintance urges marriage to his granddaughter, Agastya quickly refuses. 'Eventually, he knew, he would marry, perhaps not out of passion, but out of convention, which was probably a safer thing. And then in either case, in a few months or years they would tire of disagreeing with each other, or what was more or less the same thing, would be inured to each other's odd and perhaps disgusting ways, the way she squeezed the tube of toothpaste and the way he drank from a glass and didn't rinse it, and they would slide into a placid and comfortable unhappiness, and maybe unseeingly watch TV every evening, each still a cocoon, but perhaps it would be unwise to be otherwise.' Born in 1959, Upamanyu Chatterjee himself served in the Indian Administrative Service, and clearly knows both its ways and the disconnect felt between young Indians and their past. Agastya and his city friends are drawn to, yet troubled by, the growing dominion of Western culture; they treat their religious and cultural traditions with nonchalance or disdain; sometimes they praise the British Raj, and sometimes they denounce it. When first published in 1988, 'English, August' became a best-seller and has since been likened to John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces' and J.D. Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye.' With some justice too, though it isn't quite as funny or brilliantly written as either. Chatterjee, though, excels in his descriptions of Indian life. These aren't always comic. There's a scene in which mothers tie ropes to their small children and lower them into nearly dried-out wells so that they can bring up buckets of muddy water. One official's elegant wife casually blames the servant when her spoiled child viciously takes a bite out of the poor man. Rural 'tribals' revenge themselves on an adulterer by chopping off his arms. While the laid-back Agastya may feel out of place in Madna, the American reader soon feels grateful for the chance to visit a world by turns so familiar and exotic (and thankful for the glossary of Indian words at the back of the book). For this we must honor New York Review Books, which specializes in reprinting well-chosen fiction and nonfiction from around the world. Unlike many of the other Indian writers we read these days — Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, Rohinton Mistry, Shashi Tharoor — Upamanyu Chatterjee has remained in India, where he, surprisingly, still works as a civil servant and writes novels on the side, most recently 'The Mammaries of the Welfare State' and 'Weight Loss.' He's a writer worth discovering, and 'English, August' is the place to start. Michael Dirda is a critic for The Washington Post Book World. His e-mail address is mdirda(at)gmail.com, and his online discussion of books takes place each Wednesday at 2 p.m. on washingtonpost.com." Reviewed by Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group) (hide most of this review)
Review:
"[Chatterjee's] book displays a world rarely seen in modern Indian writing, revealing a detailed knowledge of the heartland that can result only from personal experience....[A] classic." New York Times
Review:
"It is hard to believe that it has taken this book so long to reach American readers, but once they finish it, they will agree it was well worth the wait. A contribution not just to Indian literature but to world literature." Library Journal
Synopsis:
Published for the first time in the United States, a satirical look at Indian society by an internationally acclaimed writer.
Synopsis:
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. The job takes him to Madna, “the hottest town 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 a lot easier for August than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India. Like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Catcher in the Rye, it is both an inspired and hilarious satire and a timeless story of self-discovery.
Born in India, Upamanyu Chatterjee attended St. Stephen's College in Delhi. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983, later moving to the United Kingdom to serve as the Writer in Residence at the University of Kent. A writer of short stories and novels, he was appointed Director of Languages in the Ministry of Human Resource Development for the Indian government.
Product details
336 pages
New York Review of Books -
English9781590171790
Reviews:
"Review"
by New York Times,
"[Chatterjee's] book displays a world rarely seen in modern Indian writing, revealing a detailed knowledge of the heartland that can result only from personal experience....[A] classic."
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"It is hard to believe that it has taken this book so long to reach American readers, but once they finish it, they will agree it was well worth the wait. A contribution not just to Indian literature but to world literature."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
Published for the first time in the United States, a satirical look at Indian society by an internationally acclaimed writer.
"Synopsis"
by Random,
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. The job takes him to Madna, “the hottest town 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 a lot easier for August than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India. Like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Catcher in the Rye, it is both an inspired and hilarious satire and a timeless story of self-discovery.
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