Chatterjee, Upamanyu

English, August: An Indian Story (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

Nothing Special
The great Indian novel?
A Brilliantly Funny and Irreverant Coming of Age Story in India
Slacker Satire Fails to Spark
A witty, humorous, charming, and philosophical novel written in elegant prose

English, August: An Indian Story (New York Review Books Classics)
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1590171799
Release Date: 2006-04-04

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Nothing Special.......2007-02-18

This is quite a pleasant read and the author has quite a funny turn of phrase, but overall the book is nothing special. It's hard to enthuse about a book where the main charachter goes to the middle of India, has no interest in his job, and nothing really happens. So what?
I found there were an excess of charachters in the book, who didn't really add anything to the story line. Also, the author is over-fond of pooping jokes. Quite funny in the first chapter or so, but by the time you've read your hundredth one towards the end of the book, they really start to grate.

The great Indian novel?.......2006-08-30

Here's a slightly over-the-top review I wrote a few years back...

This, by far, is one of the best books I have ever read in the English language, and not just by an Indian author. It's based on the author's experiences in the first few months of being an IAS officer when he is posted to a small township in the middle of nowhere (Looks like AP in the movie based on the book). This autobiographical background gives authenticity and depth to the novel. Not surprisingly, a major theme of the book is the isolation the author experiences, and the impossibity, considering he's a city boy, of his coming to terms with his new rural status.

The book has a deliciously irreverent air about it, about life and the IAS, which is what makes it such compelling reading. It's the first job the protagonist has ever had and one finds it very easy to relate to the dilemmas and challenges he faces therein. The book is a welcome change from pretty, pansy-ish works of fiction written by ex-pats sitting in the US or UK whose descriptions of India, in my opinion, border on magic-realism. The example that comes to mind is Rohington Mistry (Such a Long Journey, I think was the book) writing about Parsis in Bombay - found the description too sanitized and artificial - maybe not being a Bombayite makes it difficult for me to appreciate it. This book on the other hand has character and a very 'real' feel to it, it scores high on originality, everything about it feels new, the author seems to be covering ground not covered before by any other author.

The book is quite critical about the bureaucracy and some of the characters the author mocks are easily recognizable, I am told, as being based on real people he encountered when he was in the town that serves as the model for Madna. No surprise then that the book caused quite a few ripples in the IAS circle when it came out, which is of course another reason to read it! Upamanyu Chatterji, while on the subject, has apparently left the IAS and is a full time author now - a decision that has my full support based on the reading of this book. No wastage of talent happening here.

The book is incredibly funny (I feel it's tough to make people laugh and this book manages to quite well), even through the dark parts (unfortunately, there's plenty of that too) there is this wry humour thing going on which surprisingly makes the protagonist's lows a more endurable shade of blue. Another interesting thing about the book is that it seems to have been addressed to those of us who are well on our way to having 'good' careers but are not really sure if that is what we really want to do. And how this uncertainty forces us to ask ourselves what our purpose for being here is. The book doesn't answer these questions but gives legitimacy to these questions, and suggests this phase of questioning ourselves is one that all of us must pass through at some point in our lives. August joins the IAS because 1) his dad was an IAS officer, 2) he's not sure what he wants to do and 3) has some vague notions about helping India. But he gets pretty disillusioned in Madna - about the bureaucracy, the sycophancy, the corruption, the feudal attitude of the IAS officers and life in general - and is amazed at how the big Indian machine continues to move forward despite all these spanners in its works. Some of the themes explored in the novel: boredom, existential crisis, scarcity of women, masturbation, bouts of intensive exercise alternating with extended dope sessions (I have no idea what he's talking about, honest).

This book makes me proud to be an Indian, this is the Great Indian Novel.

A Brilliantly Funny and Irreverant Coming of Age Story in India.......2006-07-31

Imagine combining Salinger's THE CATCHER IN THE RYE with Roth's PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT and Kevin Smith's CLERKS and setting the whole story in rural India, using for a protagonist a college-educated, citified, pot-smoking, Marcus Aurelius reading, half-Bengali, half-Christian slacker whose friends have Anglicized his Bengali name, Agastya, into August. All this and more are accomplished in Upamanyu Chatterjee's hilarious 1988 novel ENGLISH, AUGUST. Whether you view it as a coming of age story or a slacker novel, this book is a comic masterpiece, THE GRADUATE in India without a Mrs. Robinson.

Chatterjee's story centers around a recent college graduate named Agastaya Sen. Known to his friends as August and to his family as Ogu, Agastaya lives the dissolute, carefree life of the privileged in Delhi, his father being the Governor of Bengal. Unfortunately, his mother, a Catholic from Goa, died from meningitis when Agastaya was just three years old, so he was raised largely by aunts. He passes seemingly effortlessly through college, acquiring a hybrid Western/Indian lifestyle that includes ample quantities of alcohol and marijuana. His major goal in life is simply to be happy, to live contentedly and not be bothered, and certainly not to fall into the rut of commuting to an office, working, commuting home, and then rising the next day to do it all again until he dies.

Having successfully achieved a high score on the national examinations for government service, however, August consents to a position in the Indian Administrative Service and a posting to a distant country town named Madna. Once there, he begins a training period and proves himself to be a heroic shirker of work, an incorrigible pot smoker, a compulsive freeloader, and an almost pathological liar. He arrives at work at 11:00 in the morning and works until lunch, then repairs to his private room for the rest of the afternoon, getting stoned, listening to music, reading some occasional Marcus Aurelius, and sleeping. Still, despite his best efforts to do little or nothing, August ingratiates himself into the local society and actually learns bits and pieces of his future job. Along the way, he develops friendships with an iconoclastic editorial cartoonist named Sethe, a good-hearted alcoholic government worker named Shankar, and Madna's police chief, Kumar. When he finally moves into a position of modest responsibility as a Block Development Officer in the even smaller and more backward village of Jompanna, August surprises himself (and us) by unexpectedly, and modestly heroically, solving the village's water shortage problem.

ENGLISH, AUGUST is subtitled An Indian Story, and indeed it is, yet it is also a universal story about growing up and finding one's place in the world, about giving up one's ideals and acceding to the tedious realities and responsibilities of adult life. Chatterjee's is a tale of India's multiple worlds, from the West itself (represented by England and America), the cosmopolitan strivers of the big cities, the ineffectual but lifetime-employed government workers, and the countless millions of Indians living in the rural countryside. Chatterjee reminds us constantly of India's many languages, of the difficulty that the people of one nation can have in understanding one another's lives as well as their speech.

No doubt the most noteworthy aspect of ENGLISH, AUGUST is its humor. Agastaya is a comic hero, wise-cracking and irreverent with regard to India's social and cultural institutions. One of his first observations in Madna is an excruciatingly ugly statue of Gandhi, with his walking staff now being used to prop up the statue from behind in a particularly unsightly manner. Each time he is asked the meaning of his given name, Agastaya, August invents (and sometimes actually spurts out) an outlandish explanation. When a frog takes up residence in his Madna room, August decides to leave him there and even gives him a name. The best of Chatterjee's observations concern India itself. He describes his father's serious approach to life as a blend of Marcus Aurelius and Reader's Digest, describes an over-Westernized college classmate as the kind of person who would love to get AIDS because "it's raging in America," and notes that "most of us seem to be so grateful that he [E.M. Forster] wrote that novel about India." Referring to an Indian movie director, August's slacker pal Dhrubo (who ultimately takes a job at Citibank) comments that "he [the director, Ritwik Ghatak] was awful until the French said he was good, and now he's a Master."

Chatterjee creates an exceptionally strong sense of place and a strong cast of distinctly memorable supporting characters (mostly male) who orbit dizzily around August's search for himself. August's boss, Srivastav, is a portly, bloviating big shot, yet a surprisingly good-hearted and efficient administrator. Another government administrator named Bajaj is described as "very tall and worryingly thin, with large woebegone eyes and a receding chin, as though his progenitors had been a female spaniel and Don Quixote." Then there is August's cook, Vasant, and Dhrubo and Sethe and Shankar and Agastaya's hilariously sarcastic uncle Pultukaku, and Mohan Gandhi with his wife Rohini, and the strange story of John Avery and his Indian wife, Sita, who set out to find the place where Avery's grandfather was devoured by a lion a half century earlier.

ENGLISH, AUGUST offers a marvelously entertaining passage to modern India, with all its complexities and paradoxes and sufferings and inanities. Along the way, Chatterjee drops little observational gems on the path, as when he observes that most Indians "would never read Gandhi, much less implement him" because "it was always much easier to deify a hero than to understand him." This is a first-rate comic novel that presents life in a country few Americans understand.

Slacker Satire Fails to Spark.......2006-07-18

This semi-autobiographical satiric debut novel follows the year in the life of a young man entering the Indian Administrative Service in the mid-1980s. These well-paid entry-level positions in the IAS are so coveted that only one applicant in 25,000 is accepted. One such lucky entrant is the 20-something slacker protagonist Agastya Sen, the Westernized son of the governor of Bengal. Having spent his entire life in Delhi, he is posted to the remote fictional town of Madna ("the hottest place in India") for his training as a bureaucrat. Such fish-out-of-water scenarios are a staple of comedy, and here Chatterjee uses the scenario as a backdrop to the never-really coming of age of the dissolute Sen.

Alas, this is hardly the comic masterpiece some make it out to be (and here, I consider P.G. Wodehouse as the height of comic writing) and is far from memorable. Sen is certainly a subversive force -- forever sneaking out of mindless meetings to while the afternoons lying in bed smoking pot or drinking with a few liked-minded cynics snarkily putting down various petty-minded officials. However, it's hard to get involved with a character who's so relentlessly self-involved, self-pitying, filled with boredom and a sense of entitlement, and completely incapable of action (or as he puts it "interested in nothing"). While some flashes of humor are to be found at the expense of various wives, visitors, servants, and officials, the overall impact of this quasi-slacker narrative is minimal. Few will be surprised to learn that the privileged urban Sen feels like a foreigner in his country, and few will be surprised by the biting portrayal of the IAS. And while one gets a rather vivid picture of an Indian backwater, nothing really ever happens in the story. So, while the book may be considered commendable for "telling it like it is", it's a fairly plodding tale which fails to resonate.

Note: The book was turned into a film of the same name in 1994, and a sequel was published in the U.K. under the title "The Mammaries of the Welfare State".

A witty, humorous, charming, and philosophical novel written in elegant prose.......2006-07-07

This funny and thought-provoking first novel by the Indian writer Upamanyu Chatterjee was first published in London by Faber and Faber in 1988, and in India by Penguin Books India. It became a best seller mainly through word of mouth and excellent reviews, and also nearly unanimous acclaim from the critics. Now, eighteen years after it was published in London, it has been published in the USA by New York Review of Books. The saying: Better late than never, is certainly true in this case. Back in 1988, The Times Literary Supplement declared: "A remarkably mature first novel", and the Glasgow Herald enthused, "Brings a breath of fresh talent to Indian fiction". Now, even the hard to please and frequently acerbic Kirkus Reviews has declared: "Excellent stuff. Let's have Chatterjee's other novels, please." Well, if they wish to read more novels by Upamanyu, three more are available: the sequel to this novel, titled "The Mammaries of the Welfare State" published in 2000, The Last Burden (1993), and Weight Loss (January 2006).
The novel is about a well educated young man named Agastya Sen, from a prosperous family. His father is the governor of Bengal. Agastya takes the Civil Service exam with the hope of joining the elite, exclusive, and high-paying Indian Administrative Service(IAS). For his training as an Assistant Controller, the government posts him to a tiny village named Madna, "the hottest place in India". The novel covers the time, one year, the hero spent in the village for his training. Writes Upamanyu in simple, elegant, unadorned and crystalline prose: They smoked. Dhrubo leaned forward to drop loose tobacco from his shirt. "Madna was the hottest place in India last year, wasn't it? It will be another world, completely different. Should be quite educative." Dhrubo handed the smoke to Agastya. "Excellent stuff. What'll you do for sex and marijuana in Madna?"
From the first sentence of the novel, a reader can sense that he is reading the work of a notable prose stylist. "Through the windshield they watched the silent road, so well-lit and dead. New Delhi, one in the morning, a stray dog flashed across the road, sensing prey." Quite a few of his sentences reminded me of the great writer Arundhati Roy, author of "The God of Small Things". "Then the rains came to Madna. Suddenly a roar and a drumroll, as of a distant war. The world turned monochromatic...cloud, building, tree, road, they all diffused into one blurred shade of slate."
There are several fascinating, memorable and well-drawn characters in the novel; bureaucrats and their snobbish wives, a visiting westerner, a holy man, and there is even a police chief who likes pornography.
This novel is hilarious and unforgettable. Long after you finish the novel, don't be surprised if you burst out laughing suddenly, when you recall an especially funny sentence, or two, from the book.
A thoroughly entertaining movie based on this novel, and directed by India's Dev Benegal, was released in 1994.

Average customer rating:

No holds barred look at the dark side of family life
It's all in the family!
Serious yet funny. A masterpiece
Family ties
A story of the ties of hate that bind a family

The Last Burden
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The mammaries of the welfare state
English, August: An Indian Story (New York Review Books Classics)

ASIN: 0571171559

Customer Reviews:

No holds barred look at the dark side of family life.......2006-08-02

If we are to believe mainstream cinema, family life is all gung-ho where everybody loves everybody. Anyone with half-a-brain knows that this glosses over the real complexities of blood-relationships all of us experience.

'The last burden' gives sharp insight into middle-class Indian family life (albeit in an acerbic manner) and partly explains why the majority of populace abandoned the traditional joint family structure in favor of a nuclear one. All the intricacies that inhabit this world be it financial pressure, lost love, unwanted but unavoidable obligations are all given a free rein.

IMO, this book is an unsung classic of Indian literature in English and I highly recommend it if you are in the mood for a serious and real-life subject.

It's all in the family!.......1999-10-30

When it comes to imagination and relativity,Upamanyu Chatterjee takes the cake along with the bakery.The grip that he maintains over the readers is really fascinating and I have to admit,at times,disturbing.The characters written by him are so real,that you could easily bump into them on your way to work or to the shop around the corner.They start living inside you as you turn the pages. English,August was excellent,this one tops that. His characters really make me think and look around myself as like me,most of the Indians grow up in similar family environments.It really becomes hard to understand,where you draw the line.The book makes you think,it makes you reconsider the way in which most of us take life for granted,and it does that with wit and satire,Chatterjee's most powerful weapons which he is aware of and knows perfectly where and how to use them. India is a country where family is given top priority,not that it is a bad thing,but most of the people do not get the right meaning of the word family and the responsibilities that come with it.If you look closely enough,you will find one 'Burfi'in almost every house,making similar choices and decisions,with a 'Jamun'by his side.Chatterjee makes it a point that his readers should be at ease with characters and also tries to makes them sympathise with the situations he puts them in.Which works just fine.It is really hard for me to say which is my favourite character in the whole book as all of them manage to touch you deep down,in some way or the other.This book is the stuff Bookers are made for.But it would be eons before any Indian author gets something he really deserves.Upamanyu Chatterjee displays genius beyond the recognition of an award or a prize.His characters are the best award any author could dream of. The Last Burden,definitely worth reading,is a classic novel by a great author of our time.Upamanyu Chatterjee has got my expectations raised to the peak towards his third novel,but with talent like his,rest assured.

Serious yet funny. A masterpiece.......1999-07-16

I liked "The Last burden" better than English August and I liked English August very much. I discussed the book with one of my friends who had read it and remarked to him "This book should get a booker." He said "It will be a million years before they give bookers to books like these". He was absolutely right. It's not the material that bookers are made up of. It transcends that. For one its shockingly vulgar. Even more than The Liar(Stephen Fry) and English August. However I think Chatterjee loves to show off. Every other page there was a word that I had seen for the first time. I can't recommend this book to you or otherwise because I don't know what sort of books you like. I can only speak for myself and I liked the book very much.

Family ties.......1998-11-19

'The Last Burden' is about the bonds of love & hate that bind a family together. It is a morbid, but realistic account of a 2 brothers &their ageing parents. The atmosphere is bitter, full of strife, & yet they need each other. It is v.well written.The characters of all the characters are sharply etched.

A story of the ties of hate that bind a family.......1998-11-07

'The Last Burden' is Upamanyu Chatterjee's second book after 'English August'. This is a more introspective book, about relations in a family, of the love-hate ties that bind a family. It speaks of the protagonists's ageing mother passing away, the constant friction between father & son and between brothers. Darkly humourous, it is brilliant in parts. But some passages could have been left out entirely. There is a chapter where the protagonist is having sex with his maid & then with the maid's son! That was highly unnecessary. It had nothing to do with the theme of the novel. The writing is original. I eagerly await Upamanyu's 3rd book, which I hope will be in a lighter vein.

Average customer rating:

Can be skipped

The mammaries of the welfare state
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Customer Reviews:

Can be skipped.......2005-08-25

Let me confess that I couldn't go beyond a few chapters...this book was funny in parts but the author does not know when to stop. A hallmark of a good satire is that it must be short and this book is anything but.

Am a big fan of 'English, August' and was thoroughly disappointed by this sequel. Instead of picking this, go read 'English, August' again.

Average customer rating:

Garbage

Weight Loss
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0670058629

Customer Reviews:

Garbage.......2006-09-08

"Weight Loss", like the rest of the author's books, is primarily about the profundity and absurdity of life, seen largely through the filter of promiscuity. Only this time, it really isn't so at all. "Weight Loss" deals with the story of a highly intelligent, self-deprecating individual, Bhola, who decides to give up all that makes sense and spend his life in the indefatigable pursuit of his sexual fantasies. There's almost no limit to the range of his sexual, and other perverted desires, and Chatterjee makes his protagonist live them all out, very explicitly, during the course of the book.

All that would have been fine, and in fact, even potentially interesting and humorous in a twisted sort of way, but Chatterjee clearly leaps across the fine line which divides the subtle and the poignant from the affected and the repugnant. In "Weight Loss", the situations are absurd and gross: the protagonist defecates in the teachers' room in his school; almost tops the country in his high-school examinations, but chooses to go to some unheard of college in some god-forsaken place to pursue a husband-and-wife vegetable-selling duo who frequented his neighbourhood and who he suspects, only suspects, might be in that college town because of some tenuous connections, and; participates in some complex surgical operations upon the male genitals of the aforementioned husband along with a quack! Again, all this could have been genuinely funny, but Chatterjee's attempts at making this simultaneously profound make it all feel completely ridiculous and distasteful. I could go on with a zillion examples, but in the interests of brevity, am going to cut short and hope that you get my general drift.

Overall, I would strongly suggest avoiding this book. I have already tested it with a number of people, and thus far, I can lay claim to being the only one to actually complete it! Even if you succeed where the others failed, I would be very surprised if you would be the happier for it.

Average customer rating:

English, August: An Indian Story
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Manufacturer: Rupa & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GSRHBG

Average customer rating:

One of my favorite books - not for people prone to apathy.
Awesome!
Indian Raj
Hilarious..
Amazing

English August: Indian Story
Upamanyu Chatterjee
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Customer Reviews:

One of my favorite books - not for people prone to apathy........2005-02-22

A brilliant, hilarious though dark book. Agastya's apathy is contagious, and so I'd suggest people prone to apathy and cynicism - stay away. Chatterjee manages to capture the red tape surrounding much of Indian governing to perfection, and does it with the perfect dose of humor and self-deprecation. Agasta's constant lying to the people around him really brings out his disdain for the world around him - however, what makes this book funny is his equal disdain for himself. Agastya is the antithesis of who I want to be, and yet, scarily, I see myself in him. And that is why I love this book.

Awesome!.......2004-11-23

Bright, breezy and jazzy, this novel is downright cool! The entire process of writing this novel must have been one long trip for Upamanyu, much like life was for Agastya, the main character in the book. I have ordered through Amazon,and eagerly await the next 2 novels by this guy, much like I used to await a new Greatful Dead album, while they were creating still. Upamanyu freely improvises like Jerry, so I am a big fan.
Oh, also, anybody who listens to Keith Jarrett deserves a read.

Indian Raj.......2003-06-29

"English, August" is the story of Agastya Sen, a young civil servant who is posted to Madna, a small town in rural Deccan. His experiences of Madna bring into sharp focus the vast social, cultural and economic differences in India.

Agastya's urban upbringing makes his start in Madna very uncomfortable. Here is a very different India from the one he was brought up in - but is it the "real India"?

At times, "English, August" is a very funny book, as Agastya meets the locals and becomes acquainted with their habits and peculiarities. In many ways, it's a kind of colonial story - are Agastya and his colleagues much different from their British counterparts under the Raj?

Enjoyable.

G Rodgers

Hilarious.........2003-05-17

I would say this book is hilarious; upamanyu's imagination is extreme..his description of instances created a fun riot of sorts..and all this while I would turn the next page of the book thinking what was on the Agastya Sen's mind..i simply loved this book and this remains my best read..though, at some points, agastya sen would indulge in excesses..yet, I would think that characterized the immatured arrogance of young Agastya..and it fell within the context and it was still entertaining..Must Read!

Amazing.......2003-01-22

No one has captured the widening chasm between urban and rural India as brilliantly as this. An average Indian growing up in an Indian megapolis like a Bombay or a Bangalore will tell you that he feels more at home in New York or London than in a place like Madna like rural India. A host of Indian authors like Rushdie and Naipaul write books for the westen audience, but this one is written for the Indian one - in a satirical style, totally against the current trend of Indian authors who write in a moving, spiritual and philosophical way. While I find Naipaul eternally pessimistic and defeatist and Rushdie amazingly reminiscing, Chatterjee is a realist. Agastya Sen, the main character (called August), is the average Indian you meet in your everyday life. He basically cares about India and genuinely wants to make a difference, but knows that it is not his cup of tea and so accepts the reality and tries to live through it by looking at the whole experience through the prism of satire. Truly, if there is an Indian author who deserves accolades as much as Rushdie, Naipaul or the grossly over-rated Arundhati Roy, it definitely is Chatterjee. I have also read the sequel to English, August - Mammaries of a Welfare State. It is as good if not better than English, August but I had to order the books through rediff since I couldn't find them anywhere in the USA.

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