The Romantics: A Novel: Amazon.ca: Pankaj Mishra: Books

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Book Description

Release Date: Feb 20 2001

Pankaj Mishra is one of the most promising talents of his generation, and this stunning, universally praised novel of self-discovery heralds a remarkable career.
The young Brahman Samar has come to the holy city of Benares to complete his education and take the civil service exam that will determine his future. But in this city redolent of timeworn customs, where pilgrims bathe in the sacred Ganges and breathe in smoke from burning ghats along the shore, Samar is offered entirely different perspectives on his country. Miss West and her circle, indifferent to the reality around them, represent those drawn to India as a respite from the material world. And Rajesh, a sometimes violent, sometimes mystical leader of student malcontents, presents a more jaundiced view. More than merely illustrating the clash of cultures, Mishra presents the universal truth that our desire for the other is our most painful joy.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } Pankaj Mishra is one of the most promising talents of his generation, and this stunning, universally praised novel of self-discovery heralds a remarkable career.
The young Brahman Samar has come to the holy city of Benares to complete his education and take the civil service exam that will determine his future. But in this city redolent of timeworn customs, where pilgrims bathe in the sacred Ganges and breathe in smoke from burning ghats along the shore, Samar is offered entirely different perspectives on his country. Miss West and her circle, indifferent to the reality around them, represent those drawn to India as a respite from the material world. And Rajesh, a sometimes violent, sometimes mystical leader of student malcontents, presents a more jaundiced view. More than merely illustrating the clash of cultures, Mishra presents the universal truth that our desire for the other is our most painful joy.

Product Details

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (Feb 20 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385720807
ISBN-13: 978-0385720809
Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 1.7 x 20.4 cm
Shipping Weight: 204 g

Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #797,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

From Amazon

In his impressively perceptive and thoughtful first novel, The Romantics , Pankaj Mishra explores the collisions of India's past with the onslaught of the new. Samar, a 19-year-old Brahmin, has arrived in the holy city of Benares in the winter of 1989 and taken a room where he intends to continue his solitary bookish life. His chosen companions are the likes of Edmund Wilson, Ivan Turgenev and Gustav Flaubert--with occasional unintended forays into the thick of student political upheavals through his acquaintance with the mysterious Rajesh.

But in the room next to his lives the Englishwoman Miss West, whose ex-pat entourage includes a beautiful young Frenchwoman, Catherine. Frozen by his own gaucheness and ineptitude, Samar is fascinated by what he sees as their "casual yet intimate knowingness. I felt the fragility of my own personality, my lack of opinions and taste". And yet he is convinced that in this predestined encounter with Catherine, "some of the richness of life and the world were revealed to me". With an unrelenting eye, Samar observes his own conflicts--the tumult of romantic delusion, of casual rejection, the unassuaged longings of youth--with the knowledge "that the past that had given shape and coherence to my parents lives was no longer available to me". There is neither lax nostalgia here nor conservative mourning for the past but simply a careful registering of what is.

The force of the novel's intelligence and observation, the seriousness of its purpose and its almost contemplative pace make Mishra's rite of passage for his central character and his society into a fine debut. --Ruth Petrie --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Mishra's passionate, ambitious but not entirely successful debut follows the sentimental education of its ingenuous, sensitive Indian narrator. Twenty years old and indigent, Samar has already spent three years at the University of Allahabad when he arrives in Benares in the harsh winter of 1989, hoping to learn the ways of the Western world. In a cold room he rents from an opium-dazed musician, Samar devotes his time to reading Schopenhauer and Turgenev--the sort of big books "that make idleness attractive," each filled with the promise of "wisdom and knowledge." When a middle-aged Englishwoman, Diana West, decides to create a social life for him, Samar is thrust into a circle of American and European expatriates. Through Miss West, the young Brahmin meets and falls in love with the ravishing Catherine, in flight from her "oppressively bourgeois" French parents and involved with a hopeless sitar player named Anand. The impassioned opinions of Miss West and the foreigners alert Samar to his own (perceived) inadequacies. But Samar gradually realizes that the Westerners seek an India that does not really exist, an "Edenic setting of self-sufficient villages," "consciously ethnic knickknacks" and Ayurvedic medicine. In stark contrast to the yearning, decadent drifters is the secretive Rajesh, a campus agitator whose Brahmin admirers overlook his intellectual flaws. Samar's later travels with Catherine awaken romantic feelings previously suppressed by his own traditions, and he feels keenly the struggle between his ancestral obligations (he visits his sick father in Pondicherry) and his new emotional life. As his hopes for a relationship with Catherine diminish, he gets a chance to teach English to children in Dharamsala, where he attempts to embrace his solitude. In a denouement that strains credulity, chance encounters with the foreigners from Benares persistently destroy Samar's peace of mind. Mishra seems not to trust his reader to recognize significant events; his frequent reminders slow the book's pace considerably. Nevertheless, his descriptions of the Indian landscape are sensuous; one can smell the cumin and coriander seeds, feel the hum of large crowds in the streets. Samar's bildungsroman is a promising first novel from a writer to watch. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Stock Characters, Trite Plot April 15 2004

By Totally Anonymous

Format:Paperback

I first became acquainted with the writing of Pankaj Mishra when I read, and loved, BUTTER CHICKEN IN LUDHIANA. When I learned Mishra had written a novel, I was very anxious to read it. There was much about THE ROMANTICS that I did like, but, unfortunately, there was more that I didn't like.

THE ROMANTICS is a rather late coming-of-age story of Samar, a Brahmin who has come to stay on the banks of the Ganges to read and "find himself," I guess. He meets and falls in love with a rather Bohemian Frenchwoman, Catherine, who, it seems, has very little love for him. Instead, Catherine focuses her energies on another man of Indian origin, Anand. In this way, THE ROMANTICS seems to be a book about "East meets West," or rather "East is East and West is West." Mishra seems to be telling us that westerners can't possibly understand the East and vice versa.

There's very little plot in THE ROMANTICS and the "love story" between Samar and Catherine isn't really a "love story," at least not in the conventional sense. Despite that fact, the book's very best moments take place when Catherine and Samar travel together to the Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie. This section, which is all too brief, is rather poignant and it does show us the vast differences between easterners and westerners far better than do Samar's encounters with the fiery Rajesh (who seems to be a symbol of the East).

THE ROMANTICS is a quiet book (no Salman Rushdie pyrotechnics here) and, at times, it's a very delicate and gracefully nuanced book. Most of the time, however, THE ROMANTICS is simply boring and trite and downright awkward. Samar is even reading Flaubert's SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION. Mishra also has a tendency to spell everything out, to tell us what he's just shown us and this tendency destroys much of the book's grace. As yet, Mishra certainly lacks the insight of another "quiet" Indian writer, V.S. Naipaul. Mishra, however, hasn't been displaced. Naipaul has.

Overall, I found THE ROMANTICS to be a dismal debut. The plot is "barely there," the characters are stock (Rajesh, the fiery, lower caste political activist; Catherine, the westerner who simply "can't understand the East; Samar, the Braham intellectual who's been so sheltered and protected he's actually startled when he realizes just how materially poor 99% of India is), and there's really nothing at stake.

I didn't find the book completely without merit, however. Mishra has a wonderful eye for detail and a lovely, nuanced prose style...some of the time. At other times he's way too ponderous. While reading THE ROMANTICS, I felt Mishra had a lot of insight into India to share but he needs to work on characterization and coherence...a lot. Readers want characters who come alive, not clichés. I really can't recommend this book to anyone at all.

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5.0 out of 5 stars missing the point Dec 9 2002

By Yuyutsu Neckovich

Format:Paperback

i honestly feel this is the best novel, indian or not, i have read in long time. all these reviewers who go on and on about this being an example of packaged "exoticism" and then go on to suggest reading rushdie (the king of "exoticism") really blow my mind. this is such a beautiful book precisely because it is not really about the concept "India" at all. The strange, unneccesary plot turns are simply the stuff of real life. you cant reduce this book to any trite commentary about east vs west. it has a life of its own.

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2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointing Romantic Aug 8 2002

By tokesan

Format:Paperback

For a short book, one is able to grasp the essence of life of an out-of-school young person in India. And in a country with 1 billion people, how it is virtually almost impossible to make a life in such a place. Yet this same country has its allure to foreigners. Throughout the book, there seem to be continual influx of foreigners. The exoticness of the country is a big draw, however, the book also exposed extreme desolation of life in the "ghats".

That being said, the main character was presented as someone aimless, whose only love and ambition was to read. He spent his time reading western literary critics, philosophers and hanging with his closest westerners acquaintances. The writer did well in using the character's pleasure in reading to blend western and eastern ideas. But the protagonist seemed to have no other passion but for books. However noble this appeared one is inclined to think he did so for his quest for knowledge, also so he could associate easily with his western colleagues. Ironically, one cannot really say he has close friends, as he shy away from closeness, a notion that may be blamed on the lesson learned from his stoic father about maintaining aloofness.
The only instance that revealed a hint of passion for this young man was expressed on the trip to Kalpi, northern region of India on the base of the Himalayas. It lead him to truly experience his only passionate moment. "I like this place." he blurted out to his traveling companion, Catherine, who agreed. He would later return to this region, not by his own design though, to spend the rest of his adolescent years, but those years were also spent in complete isolation, with minimal social contacts.
The most disappointing point in the book was that the character never completely resolves his aloofness. The closest passionate relationship he had never came to fruition. Ok, I am not going to make much of this since this was not a Harlequin Romance Series and I didn't necessarily expect a they-all-live-happily-ever-after sort of thing. Nonetheless, Ms. West, his neighbor, mentor, and a supposedly friend should have not been left hanging when she asked him about his brief encounter with Catherine. While he returned to Benares to see her, they spent only a few moments together and upon her mentioning her departure to him, we did not get any reaction. One would at least thought he would reveal in some way to Ms. West what happened in Kalpi or at least offer a revelation to her, which would have been sufficient to Ms. West and to this reader. He did go back to Benares to see his past and Ms. West was great part of that. Was he maintaining his life long philosophy of remaining aloof and not going back to the past? Was that why he offer Ms. West nothing? He would acknowledging her goodbye take him back to the past because he already said it once, a few years ago?

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