The Romantics

by Pankaj Mishra

Book Overview

On the banks of the Ganges, the holy city of Benares groans and heaves along the fault line where modern India presses against its living past, as pilgrims bathe in the sacred waters while the bodies... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375502742
• ISBN13: 9780375502743
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

I did not receive this book

I wish I read it. But since I only received one of the two books in my order, I did not receive it. I paid for it but did not receive it.

Grace, intensity and beauty

This is a novel of remembered youth, lost love and self-discovery. Told in Mishra's crystalline, courtly prose, it is vividly imagined and emotionally resonant. Mishrah has a knack for evoking people who have misplaced their lives in a chaotic landscape and a view of emotion and motivation that is almost clinical in its clarity. Mishrah's style is superficially similar to Naipaul's but his perspective strikes me as much more compassionate and lacking Naipaul's perpetual undertone of disillusionment. This is a much better book than Mishra's An End to Suffering, which seemed to me rather an awkward blend of didacticism and literary autobiography. Mishrah should stick to fiction: The Romantics is a wonderful read.

The pursuit of happiness

This book amazed me. I was saddened to read that other reviewers found it boring, and I can only surmise that they read through it too quickly, expecting to find a dramatic plot trajectory. Mishra is a gifted writer and subtlety seems to be his forte. He's writing about ideas, not events. I am not Indian, and I have never been to India. So perhaps it is true that I have only fallen under the spell of the Mythical East, fooled by a packaged product designed to appeal to Westerners. I must say, however, it is rather cynical to suggest that Mishra, who lives in India, labored over this work so that it would sell on the Western publishing market. The writing quality is too high for that. Furthermore, even if the descriptions of India are somewhat stereotypical, the contrasting notions of eastern and western philosophies on life and the pursuit of happiness were intriguing. Do we in the west place to high a premium on our own fulfillment? Some of the western characters (particularly Americans) come across looking like charicatures, and rightly so. Its an interesting study in the perspective we have on the courses our lives are expected to take, and how our interactions with others inevitable changes these perspectives.For anyone fed up with Rushie's magic realism and looking for more palatable Indian literature, please do read this book.

gentle and quiet,like the ganges

The Romantics is a story which has a mellow and gentle feel to it and in my opinion should be read, not in one sitting, but on a few lazy Sundays. Pankaj Mishra too is writing here in a very different style than his earlier bestseller, "Butter chicken in Ludhiana". For me as an Indian there were two highpoints in the book. The rather sympathetic insight into the life on ghats and in the madhouse of Varanasi; and a more delicately handled interaction between the east and the west in the lives of the characters in the stories. Unlike the earlier books on such interactions, the characters are not memsahibs and rajas. It is in the shape of more proletarian and identifiable people. Dont look for a complex plot here. But yes if you are looking for a believable story narrated gently, well the romantics is your book. Mishra is probably a romantic at heart, but possibly quiet shy. So the romance here is in the mood created and not in the words. Defintely worht a read ...

The Romantics

Few writers are gifted enough to portray a picture with words that not only contains picturesque scenes, but also projects sounds, smells, the emotional-romantic-philosophical journey of a young man's life in a country in limbo - with his life tracing a somewhat similar pattern his country has seen from the time of the Upanishads to the upheavals of a post-colonial 20th century. For example, Pankaj's description of the bus transporting the young romantics on the hilly roads of Mussorie - the verbiage being both corpulent and succulent - and for a reader, reading it with a hungry appetite, is metaphysically taken there:"As the bus groaned out of the ungainly clutter of downtown Mussorie, wide unobstructed vistas opened up all around us: lushly forested foothills wreathed in early morning blue mists; sharp-edged stripes of sunlight angled against the soft mulchy ground of pine grooves; thin columns of smoke rising from the tiny houses with thatch or tin roofs scattered all across the hillsides and deep valley-sallow gems of last night, ..."Furthermore, when the picture is made to move, frame by frame as in a movie, it starts to weave a rich kaleidoscope that is entertaining, realistic, and filled with the expectation: what next? ; although it contains no mafias, no plots, teary eyed heroines, and chivalrous heroes. The Romantics is a novel, that almost echoes the Romantique period of Europe, that resonates in a romantic way on the cultural-emotional sides of every day humans - Indian and Western - residing in an ancient vedic city of Benares, India. However, for the reader who expects orthodox romanticism between two young lovers - or, say a tangled triad of lovers - definitely it is a let down. On occasions the title "The Romantics" almost sounds a misnomer. This novel is definitely not Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or even an Eric Segal kind of a novel "The Lovers". This novel is a philosophical journey of a young Brahman boy from a now, somewhat poor family, who has a tryst with romance along the way. This romance hits a crescendo with the "carnal" consumption of desires than a romantic voyage. In a way it is realistic in that it is mostly true for an Indian male from a conservative, orthodox family, who has little experience of dates or intimacy of any kind with the opposite sex. For anyone who is familiar with struggles of ordinary, under-privileged Indians have to go through to insure a secure future - in decaying universities crumbled and crippled by post-colonial, rulers of modern India, that were once the hoary temples of learning - this novel will have many nostalgic memories: for instance, mini nipped-in-the-bud French revolutions where the emperor, now replaced by the vice-chancellor of the university, faces the wrath of the zealot student body containing communists, Hindu nationalists, and the rest belonging to a variety of hues and shades. One of the characters, Rajesh from a very poor fam

Fascinating portrayal of cultures in conflict

This is an extremely promising first novel. While some of the prose is a bit purple and wanted a discriminating editor, this book rates five stars because it is so much better and richer than the other over-hyped books hurled at us these days. Mr. Mishra has taken the old (think E.M. Forster) East Meets West scenario and overlaid it beautifully and successfully with a New East Meets Old East Scenario. As one who loves literature and works on the problems between and within cultures around the world, I found Mr. Mishra insightful, honest and, finally, poetic--which is rather a rare combination. This book is for the thoughtful, and the thought-filled. I have given copies to several friends. Lastly, I very much hope that this is but a beginning for Mr. Mishra, and that his future work, while shedding the excesses of prose that fail in their beauty because they have reached too hard toward it, will develop upon the handsome foundation established here. An exceptional book in these poorly-written times.