The Mammaries Of The Welfare State

In This Sequel To Upamanyu Chatterjee S Debut Novel, English, August, Agastya Sen-Older, Funnier, More Beleaguered, Almost Endearing-And Some Of His Friends Are Back. Comic And Kafkaesque, The Mammaries Of The Welfare State Is A Masterwork Of Satire By A Major Writer At The Height Of His Powers.

Nirip on the cusp of fifty is not happy with his life. His father is an ogre and his mother a witch. He is not happy with that either. His sort of half-sister is a sort of half-man. A really close relative turns out to be a serial killer. He is not happy sleeping with his chauffeur's wife. Neither is she. Then, for his amusement, his father arranges a cricket match between rival dacoit teams in which some of the players are shot dead. Who could be happy in such circumstances? Days before his fiftieth birthday, with Nirip still wondering whether he should go ahead and have himself kidnapped so that he can make some money, he discovers, most unexpectedly, that he is not the biological child of his parents. Witty, macabre, sad, cruel, unforgivingly insightful, Fairy Tales at Fifty is part adventure tale, part nightmare, part acid trip---and throughout a triumph of fiction.

Agastya Sen, known to friends by the English name August, is a child of the Indian elite. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job, which takes him to Madna - a town with the highest temperatures in India - deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies. What to do? Get stoned, shirk work, collapse in the heat, stare at the ceiling. Dealing with the locals turns out to be much easier than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India.

A Fascinating Portrayal Of Life In An Indian Middle-Class Family By The Best-Selling Author Of English, August Upamanyu Chatterjee S Second Novel Brilliantly Recreates Life In An Average Indian Family At The End Of The Twentieth Century. Jamun, The Central Character, Is A Young Man, Unmarried, Adrift. He Stays Away From His Family, Which Comprises His Parents, Urmila And Shyamanand, His Elder Brother, Burfi, His Sister-In-Law, Joyce, His Two Nephews And The Children S Ayah. Jamun Returns To The Family When His Mother Is Hospitalized. Once There, He Decides To Stay On Until One Of His Ailing Parent Dies. He Barely Admits To Himself That There Is Another, Probably Stronger, Reason For His Extended Stay In The Family Home-An Old Friend Kasturi, Now Married And Pregnant, Who Has Returned To The City (That She Associates With Jamun) . . . Flitting Back And Forth In Time And Space, And Writing In A Language Of Unsurpassed Richness And Power, Upamanyu Chatterjee Presents A Funny, Bitterly Accurate And Vivid Portrait Of The Awesome Burden Of Family Ties.

Innocent and unremarkable, but for his near crippling obsession with sex and running, Bhola goes through life falling for the wrong people. When he marries and becomes a father, Bhola believes he has come close to achieving balance in his chaotic life. Until suddenly his past catches up with him and threatens to destroy his happiness.

Now updated with groundbreaking research, this award-winning classic examines the construction of sexual identity in biology, society, and history. Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced. Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms -- sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed -- and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.

Eighty-five and half paralysed, Shyamanand is on his deathbed when he goes missing. His apparent refusal to meet death in the expected way calm and accepting and lying down is a cause for great anguish to his son Jamun, who leads a life of quiet desperation, trying to balance feelings of despair and resignation since the suicide of his friend and neighbour Dr Mukherjee. After their father disappears, Jamun and his brother Burfi reconnect in their old home that builder Lobhesh Monga has his eyes on. In their quest to find out what happened to Shyamanand, they find a path out of desolation, even as TV executive Kasturi, Jamun s former lover and mother of his only child, is busy recycling the more melodramatic moments of Jamun s life for the blockbuster Hindi soap Cheers Zindagi. In powerful, austere prose shot through with black humour, Upamanyu.Chatterjee has produced an intensely moving examination of family ties and the redemptive power of love, however imperfect, in the midst of death and degeneration.