Bernard Cohen

It's halfway between memoir and fiction in a way.

The story involves the protagonist, Kailash, also known as AK throughout the novel.

AKA, AK, yes.

He arrives in America in 1990 to undertake postgraduate studies in the area of postcolonialism.

Having arrived from a small city...

partner in the Bihar province in the east of India.

And he's transplanted from there to Mornington Heights in Manhattan, so right into the deep end of New York American culture.

And as he adjusts into American life, the narrative jumps back and forth between memories of

India and childhood and growing up and what's going on at that instant in the US.

But it's not a full pastiche in that all of those bits are attributed to the notebook that the protagonist, maybe author, was keeping through that time in America.

So in a way, rather than being a pastiche, it's a kind of documentary.

And the strongest images to me were those that were back in India.

So the opening image is in his mother's brother's place, Lotan Mamaji.

There's a monkey climbs up and finds a pistol and there's a child resting in the crib and the monkey points the gun at the child but then turns the gun around and because of the opposable thumb blows its own head off.

So the monkey dies in that scene.

So that's contrasted with what's going on in America, having just arrived, switches on the radio, and there is Dr. Ruth, and she's on the radio speaking openly about the pleasures of sex, which Kalash up to that point has only dreamt about.

Thinks about non-stop.

Yes, it's kind of a postgraduate Bildungsroman where his self-education is both his studies and the political learning that he does and the cultural learning that he does being transplanted into America, but also sexual.

That's right, which is usually about a teenager, but in this case we're postgrad.

There's a list of them in this book.