Upamanyu ChatterjeeRezensionen

At times laugh-out-loud funny, but more often a bit depressing, the author takes us inside the mind of a young, unambitious Indian man trying to figure out his life while training for his position as a civil servant in small town India. The book is full of rich characters which I had difficulty keeping straight, and outrageous moments of work avoidance I'm sure more could relate to than are willing to admit. Gives the impression of a society that learned from occupying forces how to appear to be a manager without really managing. I appreciated the window into Indian culture, but was happy to finish the book.

It’s part of an anthology. Or so I hope. A little story of revenge simmering inside an administrative officer across decades while he has the power to decide, or rather influence, the life of a person, death more so. Very few books paint a picture more accessible and subtler, ironically at the same time, of power structure in lesser words.

Or is it just very telling of the dull life bureaucrats are often fated to live in places remote and unfashionably uninteresting? That they need something very personal invisibility clinging to them so that they can get some sense of satisfaction from it knowing fully well that do not have any real power broadly speaking, being the instrument of the state they are? I have doubts. I reckon it’s just very personal in the guise of discussing something broader and deeper and not the other way round, which is usually the case with books. And that’s good.

Excellent book; a novella. It’s essentially a long story. Excellent nonetheless. What fine storytelling. Sprinkled with that occasional signature dry humour with or without the tinges of officialese which, more often than not, can be quite funny entirely on its own.

What writing! Not a moment when the narrative gets dull. A journey of self discovery that's at once humorous, satirical, and makes you feel uncomfortable because of the number of ways it is relatable. Can read this one again and again.

Disappointing.

I remember this book as a comic masterpiece. I had read it about 18 years ago - yet remember Madna and the protagonist's hilarious flirt with his own life and the surrounding.

Comment à-t-on pu affubler un texte moins idiot qu'il en a l'air un titre aussi stupide? Pavillon est une collection sérieuse et souvent de haut niveau... Et on a réussi à traduire "English August" (référence à l'acculturation tragicomique du héros ) en un titre débile (affublé d'une couverture consternante). C'en est à se demander si l'éditeur a LU le texte...

for humor 5/5.....but there were many pages which bored me... some places were too dragging.. when humor was there it was too good ... i couldn't control my laugh.... overall 3/5 :)

Hard to give a star rating for this book. Just because it's not for me, doesn't mean it is not a good book. I tried. I really did to finish this book, but found I needed far more background in Indian history and life to understand this book. There’s a lot of detail, and it’s clear that the author really knows his subject. But it is a book for people who have previously been immersed in Indian literature, not popular novels.

Good. Dopey at times. But being from a hinterland myself, I could almost see the places and people and expressions on their faces.

I am surprised that 'English, August' is not better known. It is well-written and is refreshingly funny. While the most outstanding aspect of this novel is its humor, what I like the best about it is that the story is told in such a genuine voice. For once this is not an NRI author trying to bring forth the truth about "real" India. Chatterjee draws heavily from his own experiences in the Indian administrative service to paint a picture of life in rural India, working of Government offices and bureaucracy in India of 1983. The story centers around a westernized city-boy Augustya who is stranded in a small village with a job he isn't interested in at all. The western influence on young generation and vast difference between urban and rural lives form a part of the theme as well.
There were many instances where I could easily picture the scenes in the book because it was all so familiar, it is a very Indian story.

Plot-wise not a lot seems to happen. But I guess this is a reflection of the situation at hand - just the way things don't seem to progress in government offices responsible for development and nothing seems to change from day-to-day in small villages and towns.

"Most novels progress, but this one simply chronicles an ongoing anomie and spiritual restlessness."-Washington Post.

Chatterjee doesn't let the narrative get dull at all. He presents a satirical and humorous view of the way things function. He introduces us to an array of characters who are not too far from the kind of people one could encounter in real life. And each of them is entertaining in his or her own way. Even if the situation is dull, he effortlessly evokes humor with his wit and play of words. The language perfectly complements the mood of the novel. It can be read multiple times and it still won't grow stale.

Without any doubt, Chatterjee's writing is way ahead of the likes of Adiga, Swarup or Bhagat. I am glad I came across this novel. Way to go Mr. Chatterjee!
I wanted to post some of the funny excerpts from the novel. But there are so many of them, I don't know how to pick. Just read the book...

Weight Loss is the coming of age story of a slightly overweight boy with depressingly strange sexual proclivities. The novel concentrates mainly on the latter, resulting in a fetid mix of highly disturbing descriptions of the characters' obsessions. Definitely not my cup of tea, I gave up after the first 140 pages.

English, August is fundamentally a comedy, but I would rather call it a serio-comic reflection on a young Indian man of intelligence who exhibits, among other things, an ennui that permeates his actions and choices throughout the novel. It is the story of Agastya Sen, known to his friends by the English name, August, who is a member of the Indian elite, educated at Yale, and recently ensconced in a prize government job. It is a job which takes him to Madna, "the hottest town in India," deep in the rural countryside. Surrounded by an amalgam of neer-do-wells, bureaucrats and characters of various kinds that share only the common characteristic of being both annoying and of no interest to August he wonders what to do? While settling into a self-indulgent life that includes both pot and pleasing himself he incongruously he begins reading a combination of Marcus Aurelius and the Bhagavad Gita.
"In those months he grew to like immensely this wise sad Roman. Marcus immediately made him feel better, because Marcus seemed to have more problems than anyone else--not the soul-squashing problems of being poor, but the exhilarating abstract problems of one immersed wholly in his self."(p 80)
On the recommendation of one of his new acquaintances, who runs his father's hotel, he also begins to read the Gita.
"Thus, through happenstance, Agastaya could place the Bhagavad-Gita beside Marcus Aurelius on his shelf. . . Most passages were abstruse, but Agastaya was surprised by some:"(p 96)
Omnipresent throughout the novel was the ennui of this young man who had no direction in his life and no interest the profession that had been chosen for him by his father, prestige notwithstanding. August, on the contrary, after almost two hundred pages he thinks:
"No emotion was sacredly his own, and he half-hope that his restlessness would thus succumb to attrition. Perhaps his mind would finally realize that its disquietude was merely an index of its immaturity, as inevitable a sign of growing-up as the first emission of semen, as universal as excrement, and about as noteworthy."(p 195)
"At night he would lie awake and hear the clack of his uncle's typewriter and watch the dark shape of the bougainvillaea outside the window, and see in its twists and turns a million things, but never his future."(p 197)
Yet this is a comic novel. One that is filled with humorous characters, recognizable to anyone familiar with bureaucracies. The omnispresent heat and fecundity of life demonstrated, to the consternation of August, in mosquitoes and animal feces, presents an unquestionable level of discomfort that is put to use for comic purposes. But the central irony is Agastya himself and that is no better illustrated than by the derivation of his name. His doctor's father shares this near the end of the story:
"Agam is mountain. Agastya could be agam plus asyat, one who pushes a mountain. Or agam plus styayati, one who stops a mountain. We often have this ambiguity, and uncertainty about our names, their origins."
There may also be a suggestion of Sisyphus in all this mountain-pushing business, but perhaps not. What is present is great irony when considering the life of this young dreamer of uncertain origins who is adrift in the heart of India near the start of a life that may merely drift off into the future.

A lesser sequel. If's funny but lacks the introspection, the self-discovery and the process of coping that made English, August special.

A poignantly written story about a lower-middle class Indian family pre-liberalization with all its warts; the domestic battles between husband and wife; the constant economic worry; the selfishness of children; the helplessness and abandonment of old age. All written with an unforgiving sharp wit.

"It's about doing paperwork (or avoiding doing paperwork), going to teas with your boss's wife, and overseeing village well-digging projects, as well as smoking pot, masturbating, and reading Marcus Aurelius."

That's Akhil Sharma in the introduction to English, August: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee, incisively summing up the novel , and if that doesn't whet a reader's appetite, particularly a reader looking for something new out of India, something without the sickeningly sweet fetor of "magical realism," then I don't know what will. His account of the life of a slacker, forced to give up his citified ways (if not the vices mentioned above), when, as a member of the Indian civil service, he is sent to a backwater town, is often laugh-out-loud funny, and never less than amusing. It is also refreshing that the slacker-narrator never does find certainty about the path his life should take but instead, at the end, accepts that life is an uncertain business.

The identity of the book lies in its growth; Eight years in the service, beloved August, has grown into a well rounded Sri Augustya Sen saab; the confusion has given way to charming cynicism which helps him to keep his nose just above the waters and take one day at a time , literally. Unlike English, August, the narrative voice isn’t primarily singular, but fragmented making Augustya an obscure cog in a massive juggernaut of a fleet that is the Indian bureaucracy.

It is easy to see why the book has been unpopular, or rather, not as popular as its prequel; it lacks a centre, the narration is diffuse while the characters conveniently drift in and out. But still, the book is absolutely brilliant for Chatterjee remains faithful to one of the most complicated subjects that can ever hoped to be captured in any language, let alone English ie the behemoth of governance in India. If English, August was a delicate outside-in peep into the Indian bureaucracy through the august eyes of English , Mammaries is a vast chronicle of the functioning of Indian bureaucracy and its hilarious yet inevitable association with the Indian politics. All of course captured in Chatterjee’s brilliant prose alternating between slapstick and satire.

Had I read this book a bit earlier or even later, I would have missed the grand joke that runs through page after page in the book. Clearly one should have a useless drain for a mind to appreciate the beauty of this book, well, thankfully I have.

Actually a revisit; I am reading now with a friend, travelling across India ( Ah!! joy of reading aloud a passage on an Indian beach);

Had read it first time when I was a spring-chicken, hardly grasped its essence; Now having met so many Shrivatsavs, Kumars, Bhatias, Sathes, Mrs Rajans, even Vasanth, why even that bastard Tamse, I feel at home here, It is like returning to a childhood lover who has grown more gorgeous, on whose sweet shapely belly you can lay your head and wonder ... Why, The mind is so restless...Oh Krishna?

The only thing I liked about this was Rahul Bose.