Product Description

The most arresting Indian novel since Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things'. Thirty years from now, old Paresh Bhatt settles down to drink an espresso (made, somewhat ostentatiously, with real water), and reflects on the key moments of his life. But even as Paresh recalls his parents' courtship during the freedom movement of the 1930s, his daughter, Para, is in the air -- a crack fighter pilot in the belligerent Indian airforce, mounting raids against the Pak-Saudi alliance! Sharp, modern, fluent and varied, this is a debut novel from India of an utterly original kind. Joshi has found a style and a form in which to say new things about the Indian experience in a new manner.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166000 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ruchir Joshi's debut The Last Jet-Engine Laugh is buoyed by the belief that everything matters, that every ephemeral peak, deepening drop, every drive, every breakfast, every touch, sound and word slowly forming, extends to the heart of some fundamental genetic momentum.

Paresh is the glue of the story, son of two former non-violent revolutionaries who met on a demonstration in Ahmedabad. Detached from the urgency that fuelled his parents' convictions, he adopts a passive stance toward the events of his life, becomes an observer. His daughter, Para, in turn exposed to Paresh's haphazard experience, his lack of urgency, takes firm root in combat flying. Reaction and adaptation, circumstance and principle: through the characters' instalment in the present--1970-2000-2030--and through the evolution of one family, the future of India and Indians is skilfully conjured. In a matter of decades, India has become a militaristic power from its ascetic, caste-structured past and Para, only one generation removed from Thoreauvian pacifists, has become a war hero. The wonder of Joshi's narrative is not the fantastic leaps he takes but that he makes them so convincingly.

Ruchir Joshi is relaxed and sincere, often ironic and very funny. Those readers wary of the vigorous Indian literary invasion, those tired of Salman Rushdie's apocalyptic seriousness or still angry at Tagore for The Home and the World, will find here a strong clear voice. --Michael Kedda

Review
'The brand new experience after Rushdie: a megashow, Russian in size, Indian in soul.' India Today 'Written in the joyous tradition of Tristram Shandy, Joshi has Sterne's gift for digressions [and] the master's eye for his surroundings. This is surely a great moment for Indian literature. "The Last Jet-Engine Laugh" debates whether the story of a nation can be the story of a self.' Tom Payne, Daily Telegraph 'Exhilarating!Joshi's narrative jump-cuts with a surreal invention reminiscent of the work of Vonnegut.' The Times 'Proof positive that it's possible for Indian writers to be wickedly cynical, funny and bitter without the scathing edge blunting the Indianness or vice versa!Put simply, "The Last Jet-Engine Laugh" is a family saga across three generations. It's also (as most really good books are) a love story. But before you yawn and reach for the remote saying, "Yaar, saala, it's been done before," it ain't quite been done like this. Joshi is a most unsuitable boy, and if there were a glass palace about, he'd be the one throwing stones.' Anita Roy, Biblio 'Stylish, suggestive, musical!a great moment for Indian literature.' Daily Telegraph

From the Publisher
Review
Reviewed in the Daily Telegraph in which the reviewer "amazed by the bravery of this first novel" applauds Rochir Joshi for writing "in the joyous tradition" of Laurence Sterne. "He has Sterne's gift for digressions...And Joshi has the master's eye for his surroundings...This is surely a great moment for a national literature"

Customer Reviews

A Long Ride in a Fast Machine
I'm still getting my breath back! This is something utterly new in Indian fiction, and given that India unquestionably has one of the world's strongest literary traditions, that's saying something.

Joshi shows us exactly what the novel can do in this break-neck, flash-cutting ride through the lives of three generations of an Indian family from 1970 to 2030. Paresh, the central character, is a photographer of some renown, a sad and disillusioned man who is found at the opening of the novel living in a future India which is only too chillingly believable. (Bombay and Karachi have both been taken out by terrorist nuclear strikes; there are riots over water; teams of female crack fighter pilots are involved in border skirmishes with an American-funded Pakistan.) His own life, along with the narratives of his parents and of his daughter Para (who is herself a fighter pilot), are given to us almost as a succession of photographic stills - at first this makes it a little difficult to keep track of what is going on, but ultimately the effect is exhilarating in the extreme. However, this is postmodernism with a heart - the relationship between Paresh and Para is particularly moving, and there are some extraordinarily intense scenes of emotional desolation (Paresh has lost his lover Sandhi in the Bombay nuclear strike, and despairs for the safe return of his daughter from her latest mission).

This is not an easy read, but unquestionably a moving and exhilarating one. As a demonstration of what astonishing speeds and high-G-force turns the contemporary novel is capable of, this book is unrivalled.

Glory hallelujah!
Heard about Ruchir Joshi's novel along with Pankaj Mishra and Raj Kamal Jha and almost didn't read it because those two were so awful and so pretentious.

But this guy is bloody good! It's a rollercoaster ride through an India that at last I recognise as close to the place I live in and he's broken out of that fine writing crap. It's like trying to follow the trajectory of one of Para's jets in a dogfight, he goes all over the place and sometimes he almost shoots the reader down by accident but you'll be glad you hung on. It's a wild, exhilarating ride through language and ideas.

It's also got such a range of tones. He can be boorish but also sensitive, he has a grasp of immediate contemporary history and of the past, and under all the tomfoolery his vision of India is complex, dark and very believable. And the Bose section--an alternative view of where one of India's most contentious freedom fighters ended up--is moving, outrageous and ultimately, one of the best feats of imagination I've come across in a while.

It's a --dare I use that much-abused word?--a masterpiece. Give him the Booker, at least he's more fun to read than Atwood's yawn-a-minute fake sci-fi stuff that was last year's winner.

A subtle alternate history
We don't get to see. anything like enough science fiction from outside the Anglo-American alliance. The Last Jet-Engine Laught shows us what can be done with the genre from a quite different perspective of time and space. I found I had to dig up everything I knew about Indian history to work out what was "alternate" and what was real, but it was worth it. The book has an internal historical coherency that makes its future frighteningly real, and its characters very moving.