Sudeep Sen
Reviews
Amitabha Bagchi. Above Average.
HarperCollins, Price 195, Pages 308, ISBN 81-7223-653-3.
Amitabha Bagchi’s Above Average is another IIT novel — no, that is a truly unfair comparison because of the popular cultural baggage it tends to carry with it. Unlike the other recentish novels in this sub-genre, Bagchi’s is a novel ‘proper’ — with its fictive graph and unravelling of characters sketched in unfolding detail. It is a mild-mannered novel though, set at one end of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar neighbourhood and the Indian Institute of Technology [IIT]at the other, and of course America. There is lucidity in Bagchi’s writing — a sense of bhadrolok — one that is often absent in his contemporaries. There is also much honesty and passion and the intelligence of working within the limitations of this format. A hugely welcome debut.
Page(s) 387
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