Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50507 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Synopsis
In India, at the birth of the last century, an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out form his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Nath's odyssey of self-discovery - a journey that will take him from the streets of Agra, via the red light district of Bombay, to the green lawns of England and beyond - as he struggles to understand who he really is.

Customer Reviews

scenes of empire
This starts out as a particularly grim book, with the outcast antihero
finding himself in different types of sexual slavery. In different guises,
he then finds himself in England and Africa, where the writer allows himself
more scope for seeing the funny side of life. Starting out in the Raj and
finishing in Africa, the effects of empire are reflected in this readable story.

A remarkable first novel
Ronald Forrester is an English forester in Simla, India, where he came to see what life was like in, ironically, a country without trees. In 1918 during a violent storm which floods the country, this difficult and taciturn man encounters a young woman called Armrita in a cave. After an expert and violent sex scene, the Englishman is killed by the flood and Armrita is taken to Agra to be married to Razdan, a distinguished court pleader who belongs to one of the highest and most distinguished castes in all Hindustan. Some months later, Armrita gives birth to a son, Pran Nath, who is actually Ronald Forrester's child, and dies after delivering the baby. A few years later, when Razdan learns that is son is the "bastard child of a casteless, filth eating, left-and-right-hand-confusing Englishman", he dies of shock. Now an orphan, Pran Nath is thrown out of the house by the chowkidar and becomes one of the many homeless of Agra.
So begins the epic life of a young boy of six in India. His odyssey-like journey will take him from Agra to the red light district of Bombay, then to the brick cloisters of the University of Oxford and finally to Fotseland, in Africa. It is the sad story of a man never understanding who he really is, neither really Indian nor really English, despite all his efforts. Mr Kunzru meditates on the construction of identity, self deprecation, miscegenation and racism in an ambitious and remarkable first novel.

Derivative and ultimately as confused as its protagonist
The Impressionist is OK, but nothing more than that. It deals with issues of identity, but does not match Philip Roth's The Human Stain.

It is full of Indian colour, but cannot compare to "A Suitable Boy" for its veracity, although there is more sex (and less romance) in The Impressionist.

It has something to say about colonialism, but unfortunately deals so much in caricatures, with its sex-crazed, spendaholic Nawabs, ascetic Sabus, and drunken, repressed English Commissioners that you never quite believe any of it. If the writing had the verve and style of PG Wodehouse, or Evelyn Waugh, one might forgive Kunzru his eccentric panapoply of characters, but the funny bits are not that funny, and sentimental parts lack an emotional heart.

The writing is OK, but not much more. This was fine for a holiday read, but I would not recommend it.