The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas

By Paul Theroux

Book Overview

A master of the travel narrative weaves three intertwined novellas of Westerners transformed by their sojourns in India.

This startling, far-reaching book captures the tumult, ambition, hardship, and serenity that mark today's India. Theroux's Westerners risk venturing far beyond the subcontinent's well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A middle-aged couple on vacation veers heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds succor in Mumbai's reeking slums. And a young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore.

We also meet Indian characters as singular as they are reflective of the country's subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar, an earnest young striver whose personality is rewired by acquiring an American accent, a miracle-working guru, and others.

As ever, Theroux's portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect. The Elephanta Suite urges us toward a fresh, compelling, and often inspiring notion of what India is, and what it can do to those who try to lose--or find--themselves there.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0547086024
• ISBN13: 9780547086026
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Great Stories

I loved these stories. I could not put this collection down. Theroux is a favorite of mine. His "The Happy Isles Of Oceania" is one of my favorites. Now "The Elephanta Suite" joins that book.

Strange and wonderful tales of visitors to India

Theroux, long a master of the short story about people in faraway places (The Consul's File should be on everyone's must-read list), again shocks, enchants and leaves us gasping more more. Theroux's India is a dark funhouse. Lust with consequences, ashrams closer to Charles Manson than Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, monkeys and people acting like monkeys. Fabulous stories.

Excellent

I enjoy reading fiction that depicts modern day India. This group of three novellas is right up there with the cream of the crop. There's nothing romanticized about the India depicted here. As you read, you really get the feeling, "This is probably the way India really is." There were many times when I wondered to myself, "How does someone become such a sharp observer as Theroux is?" I was amazed both at Theroux's command of the language, and how extremely sharp he is at bringing out the telling detail that really gives you the feel of the place and the person described. There are a lot of unsavory characters here. And yet Theroux describes them so well that I always felt their humanity and got a clear sense of why they were doing what they were doing. That put me in touch with their humanity and created a sense of sympathy, in most cases. Though there were one or two slime bags that I could never like, though, thanks to Theroux's genius, I could understand them. I was amazed by this book. If you are interested in modern day India as well as enjoy just plain masterful writing, then you will treasure this book.

Amazing As Ever

Another phenomenal feat by Theroux with many others to his credit, the last full novel, Blinding Light being one of his best. This short set fulfills all the usual expectations from one of my favorite authors, the masterful, understated literary touches, the exquisite detail of human foibles, the ironic surprise result of life's hopes, dreams, and desire. And the stories confirmed everything I thought about India, the back-stabbing, the incestuous social infrastructure, the mystery, the filth and degradation, and of course the smell of the teeming masses subsisting at the barest level of abject poverty where hunger, desperation, and prostitution of all kinds abound. Written in his inimitable style another little masterpiece by our favorite traveler.

SAVVY, SENSUAL, SPELLBINDING -- PURE LITERARY CANDY!

Reading "The Elephanta Suite" by Paul Theroux, was a pure delight--virtual nonstop literary pleasure! Each novella transported me on an exotic sensual journey through an India few get an opportunity to observe. Everything about these stories was unexpected and new. This was one rollicking armchair adventure ride. In three, roughly 80-page mininovels, Theroux doesn't give us the sanitized Merchant-and-Ivory India. He doesn't give us the tidy India of best-selling contemporary novels. Rather, he exposes us to the real underbelly of Indian culture. This is an India of pleading beggars, teenage prostitutes, weirdly comic salesmen, and people so pompous they are like parodies. Most of all, this is an India where poor people are as abundant as fleas and virtually every one will do almost anything to get one tiny step ahead. Each of the novellas deals with American travelers. The stories are superficially interlaced. These travelers are in India at approximately the same time. In odd ways, their paths cross. It is amusing to discover these completely unimportant connections, so I won't say any more. If you discover them, pat yourself on the back and know that you are a careful reader. If you miss them, don't worry: these connections are of absolutely no importance. The first novella, "Monkey Hill," tells the tale of a wealthy American couple who vacation in India at a luxury retreat. They only see the real India from the window of their limousine as they are rushed from the airport to their lush hilltop health-spa retreat. Through brief sexual encounters with two startlingly beautiful young people working at the resort, the wife and husband are each introduced separately to the other India--the hovel of a small rural village located completely out-of-sight within walking distance from the resort. Little do they realize that the village is currently a hotbed of Hindu-Muslim cultural and religious strife, a power-keg just waiting to go off. The second novella, "The Gateway of India," is about one of those American businessmen who give global business and America travelers a well-deserved bad reputation. This man is everything an American in India shouldn't be. At first completely terrified by India's alien culture, the businessman hides in his hotel eating canned food and drinking purified water. By chance he is catapulted into the other India, and falls in love with the new, sexually liberated person he becomes. In the end, this story has an interesting twist that you won't see coming. The last novella, "The Elephant God," deals with a young female Ivy-League backpacker. Idealistically, she ends up living in a religious retreat, loving every moment of it. She thinks it's free, and plays with the idea of living there forever. Her Indian roommates subtly make it known to her that she needs to donate a substantial sum of money each month to help pay for her living costs. So she finds a job at a global call center training workers to mimic an everyda