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Weight Loss
Book by Chatterjee, Upamanyu
- GenresFiction
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
8 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
About the author
Upamanyu Chatterjee
18 books209 followersUpamanyu Chatterjee is an Indian author and administrator, noted for his works set in the Indian Administrative Service. He has been named Officier des Arts et des Lettres (Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters), by the French Government.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
August 11, 2008
Loved it. Typical Upamanyu... he is so vulgar and so incredibly insightful at the same time that he makes you feel naked!
January 15, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them
Weight Loss is not about dieting. If you come here looking for calories and cardio, you’re in the wrong queue. This is Upamanyu Chatterjee doing what he does best: turning the middle-aged Indian male psyche inside out and shaking it until all the loose change of hypocrisy, desire, self-loathing, and bureaucratic absurdity falls out.
The novel follows Bhola, a senior civil servant, who embarks on a weight-loss journey that is less about shedding kilos and more about confronting the grotesque excess of his own life—sexual, emotional, professional, and existential.
Chatterjee uses the body as metaphor with surgical precision. The fat is not just physical; it is moral, psychological, institutional. The Indian state itself feels obese in this novel—bloated with inertia, corruption, and rituals that no longer nourish anyone.
What makes Weight Loss uncomfortable (and therefore excellent) is its refusal to offer redemption arcs. Bhola does not “learn a lesson” in a neat, Instagrammable way.
Instead, the novel circles obsessively around desire—especially male desire—showing how it mutates with age but never really matures. Sex here is not liberating; it is compulsive, repetitive, faintly ridiculous.
Chatterjee writes these scenes with brutal honesty and zero sentimentality, which will offend some readers. Good.
Literature should offend when it’s telling the truth.
Stylistically, the book is classic Chatterjee: dense, ironic, allusive, packed with literary references and bureaucratic jargon. It demands attention.
This is not a skim-on-the-train novel. The prose mirrors Bhola’s mind—rambling, sharp, self-aware, and deeply cynical. The humor is dark, intellectual, and often savage.
You laugh, then feel slightly guilty for laughing.
At its core, Weight Loss is about decay—of the body, of institutions, of ideals. It’s also about the lie of self-improvement.
Chatterjee seems deeply suspicious of the modern obsession with optimization: better bodies, better careers, better selves.
His answer is bleak but honest—without ethical clarity, improvement is cosmetic.
This is not a lovable novel. It doesn’t want to be. It’s a mirror held up to privilege, masculinity, and late-capitalist India, and the reflection is not flattering.
But it is necessary.
Most recommended.
Weight Loss is not about dieting. If you come here looking for calories and cardio, you’re in the wrong queue. This is Upamanyu Chatterjee doing what he does best: turning the middle-aged Indian male psyche inside out and shaking it until all the loose change of hypocrisy, desire, self-loathing, and bureaucratic absurdity falls out.
The novel follows Bhola, a senior civil servant, who embarks on a weight-loss journey that is less about shedding kilos and more about confronting the grotesque excess of his own life—sexual, emotional, professional, and existential.
Chatterjee uses the body as metaphor with surgical precision. The fat is not just physical; it is moral, psychological, institutional. The Indian state itself feels obese in this novel—bloated with inertia, corruption, and rituals that no longer nourish anyone.
What makes Weight Loss uncomfortable (and therefore excellent) is its refusal to offer redemption arcs. Bhola does not “learn a lesson” in a neat, Instagrammable way.
Instead, the novel circles obsessively around desire—especially male desire—showing how it mutates with age but never really matures. Sex here is not liberating; it is compulsive, repetitive, faintly ridiculous.
Chatterjee writes these scenes with brutal honesty and zero sentimentality, which will offend some readers. Good.
Literature should offend when it’s telling the truth.
Stylistically, the book is classic Chatterjee: dense, ironic, allusive, packed with literary references and bureaucratic jargon. It demands attention.
This is not a skim-on-the-train novel. The prose mirrors Bhola’s mind—rambling, sharp, self-aware, and deeply cynical. The humor is dark, intellectual, and often savage.
You laugh, then feel slightly guilty for laughing.
At its core, Weight Loss is about decay—of the body, of institutions, of ideals. It’s also about the lie of self-improvement.
Chatterjee seems deeply suspicious of the modern obsession with optimization: better bodies, better careers, better selves.
His answer is bleak but honest—without ethical clarity, improvement is cosmetic.
This is not a lovable novel. It doesn’t want to be. It’s a mirror held up to privilege, masculinity, and late-capitalist India, and the reflection is not flattering.
But it is necessary.
Most recommended.
October 13, 2012
the first sign that you are living in your own fishbowl of ideas is when you are unperturbed by something which grosses the majority out. i'd call myself privileged to be so since that appears to be the case when it comes to this book by upamanyu sahab. the book declares on its cover that its about tracking spiritual degradation of humans. however that is just a decoy and the book conceptually is anything but that. weight loss is more about shedding that baggage of ideas and concepts that are birthed by us knowingly or unknowingly, the usual cultural patterns that we find ourselves enmeshed in. so what if you are not born into circumstances that design a fate for you and where you areunable to perceive a definite aim in the scheme of things unlike others? bhola finds himself so unlike his friend who goes onto create a multi million worth of health service. when a kid is unable to find a grand scheme for him what will he be drivem by? the thing most immediate to him will be his body which he will get the opportunity to examine in close quarters all the time of his living day and perhaps like bhola, might as well be driven by his bodys desire. the same is drawn in the book in the most imaginative way possible . on a different tangent i would not miss mentioning the absolute hilarity with which this book begins with and sustains through initially before making way for a maturer bhola. however his maturity is born from the absurd and so does he land himself into absurdity which eventually creates completely unintended consequences.for.him later. though one can shed ideas, beliefs, thoughts, behaviour patterns and experience a weight loss in the mind ultimately, perhaps slowly moving towards a vaccum, in the end of one's days like tengo's father in 1Q84, one surely cannot possibly cause a weight loss from one's mind of this basic human sexual desire. stripped of all that society plans for one, bhola is in the pursuit of sexual experiences, and counts the same proudly too, almost as a sort of achievement similar to that of any other professional accomplishment. this may be termed absurd by many eventually, however the book is anything but that. it should rank highly among the most imaginative ones ever produced by an indian author but to my utter disappointment, i have learned that this book hardly made a mark.
July 22, 2013
I picked up this book as soon as I saw it in my city library rack because I had enjoyed Upamanyu Chatterjee's English August. It was a well-written book.
However, Weight Loss, was a let down. The protagonist is mentally crippled due to his obsession with vulgar, homoerotic fantasies. I found many of his sexual accounts puke-ish.
I would categorize this book as soft porn.
However, Weight Loss, was a let down. The protagonist is mentally crippled due to his obsession with vulgar, homoerotic fantasies. I found many of his sexual accounts puke-ish.
I would categorize this book as soft porn.
August 9, 2025
This story bemused me quite a bit!
UC's prose is hilarious and at times somewhat beguiling too, but this particular story.. over 400+ pages, seemed rather a bit malformed - for want of a better word!
Larger review to follow...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So here, after nearly a year... is the larger review that I was meant to write earlier.
As I had mentioned, this story left me rather a bit bemused (if that’s the word I want) and quite - I want to say unsettled but am not sure if that’s how I truly feel... perhaps I’ll come back to that later.
On the face of it, the story was amusing, although one might argue entirely overlusted (if there is such word, if there isn’t then I’m coining it here 😁). One constantly got the sense of viewing a work of art by the master Francis N. Souza albeit in prose and of a rather inferior quality. The grotesque imagery conveyed in the paragraphs seemed specially written so to enlist in the reader a modicum (or perhaps plenty) of titillation and not much else.
However at some level, if one considered it in a quiet moment, one did feel mockery being aimed at society in general and our taboos, customs, and whathaveyou in particular without any regard for moral hinges.
Upamanyu-da (I ought to call him that for he is a fellow Bong, after all) told us quite a tale of love, lust, and loss.… where the main character traverses a life of some joviality, much exercise, enough longing, a bit of belonging, and a denouement of foregoing all in a funny engaging yet somewhat unintelligible manner.
Read it if you must... no great loss if you didn't!
UC's prose is hilarious and at times somewhat beguiling too, but this particular story.. over 400+ pages, seemed rather a bit malformed - for want of a better word!
Larger review to follow...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So here, after nearly a year... is the larger review that I was meant to write earlier.
As I had mentioned, this story left me rather a bit bemused (if that’s the word I want) and quite - I want to say unsettled but am not sure if that’s how I truly feel... perhaps I’ll come back to that later.
On the face of it, the story was amusing, although one might argue entirely overlusted (if there is such word, if there isn’t then I’m coining it here 😁). One constantly got the sense of viewing a work of art by the master Francis N. Souza albeit in prose and of a rather inferior quality. The grotesque imagery conveyed in the paragraphs seemed specially written so to enlist in the reader a modicum (or perhaps plenty) of titillation and not much else.
However at some level, if one considered it in a quiet moment, one did feel mockery being aimed at society in general and our taboos, customs, and whathaveyou in particular without any regard for moral hinges.
Upamanyu-da (I ought to call him that for he is a fellow Bong, after all) told us quite a tale of love, lust, and loss.… where the main character traverses a life of some joviality, much exercise, enough longing, a bit of belonging, and a denouement of foregoing all in a funny engaging yet somewhat unintelligible manner.
Read it if you must... no great loss if you didn't!
June 25, 2017
Dark n funny ! This time the author has disappointed this fan.
Funny yes may be in some way in some parts but the desperation to make it dark leaves the reader on urgent urge to finish the book instead of enjoying it. Mr Chatterjee seems to describing every nook & corner and specially incense stick & mosquito repellent may be thrice or more. And it seems like towards the end he tried very very hard for darkness, death, drug overdose, chemotherapy that spring up out of the blue and sex masala.
Silly is a classical singer, nursing mother, is a chain smoker shares passion of smoking with her husband whom we do not know of smoking ever before and the author get into giving details of her smoking more than ten cigarettes a day !! Seriously?
Guess it's the bureaucratic syndrome of listening "yes sir" " you are great sir" diminishes the good creativity and having held them in high esteem for the previous work we end up reading cover to cover "weightloss" saying to ourselves next page will be better. Alas no.
Funny yes may be in some way in some parts but the desperation to make it dark leaves the reader on urgent urge to finish the book instead of enjoying it. Mr Chatterjee seems to describing every nook & corner and specially incense stick & mosquito repellent may be thrice or more. And it seems like towards the end he tried very very hard for darkness, death, drug overdose, chemotherapy that spring up out of the blue and sex masala.
Silly is a classical singer, nursing mother, is a chain smoker shares passion of smoking with her husband whom we do not know of smoking ever before and the author get into giving details of her smoking more than ten cigarettes a day !! Seriously?
Guess it's the bureaucratic syndrome of listening "yes sir" " you are great sir" diminishes the good creativity and having held them in high esteem for the previous work we end up reading cover to cover "weightloss" saying to ourselves next page will be better. Alas no.
September 15, 2014
Again, I'm going to write a meta-review. Almost every single low-rating review uses words like 'vulgar' and 'perverted'. Make of that what you will, but I'd prefer some judgement on the writing, which is excellent here, rather than moralising about the themes.
June 13, 2017
My immediate reaction upon finishing this novel was a mixture of relief and sadness.
Chatterjee's prose and manipulation of dark comedy was enough to reel me in.
As the book trudges on, the story, I feel, begins to dampen, and, as the other reviews say, becomes almost torturous to read. The story becomes convoluted, jumbled, and begins to digress from the storyline.
If you dig Chatterjee's prose, I recommend reading Aravind Adiga.
Chatterjee's prose and manipulation of dark comedy was enough to reel me in.
As the book trudges on, the story, I feel, begins to dampen, and, as the other reviews say, becomes almost torturous to read. The story becomes convoluted, jumbled, and begins to digress from the storyline.
If you dig Chatterjee's prose, I recommend reading Aravind Adiga.
March 28, 2023
One of the worst book I've ever read. The first chapter of book keeps you glued and entertained with humour.With the end of this chapter all good things about the book come to an end. The plot is almost non-existent and the author trys to compensate for this by adding vulgar and abominably disgusting descriptions of sexual escapades.
March 31, 2019
A compendium of perversions. Nonetheless, eminently readable.
Read
November 23, 2022Funny but bloated
October 9, 2014
Highly gross, vulgar & disgusting book.. its one of those books that when you are reading it u suddenly start tasting & feeling gross.. it gives you a creepy feeling. After reading 'English August' I had really high opinion of Upamanyu Chatterjee and actually thought that Weightloss would be if not upto but somewhere close.. But it turned out to be a spoiler, a waste.. who wants to know of an obese, growing teenager's weird sexual fantasies.. he probably fantasises everything & anything.
I started reading it and took all the weird comparisons & fantasies in humor.. but it just kept getting more gross. Really if you are hoping an 'English August' please stay far from this book, especially women readers who get nothing.. I don't how the book gets on later or whether it improves or deteriorates further because had no appetite to read it afte say about 50 - 75 pages.. It was as if I am eating raw fish or a raw animal.. seriously gross.
I started reading it and took all the weird comparisons & fantasies in humor.. but it just kept getting more gross. Really if you are hoping an 'English August' please stay far from this book, especially women readers who get nothing.. I don't how the book gets on later or whether it improves or deteriorates further because had no appetite to read it afte say about 50 - 75 pages.. It was as if I am eating raw fish or a raw animal.. seriously gross.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 3, 2015
Full review here: https://thereandtheir.wordpress.com/2...
There are a few books that set up extreme emotions in your soul. Weight loss is one such book. Right from its first page I could feel some emotions that grew stronger with each passing page, that of disgust and nausea.
Thankfully I did not waste money while buying the book (it was sent by Readers Digest), or it would have been the worst way possible to waste money.
The book, by its name and cover are far too misleading. It seems like a book written by an extremely disturbed kinky teenager who needs desperate help.
It is supposed to be ‘funny’ i guess, but it is so bizarre that I could not even manage a smile.
There are a few books that set up extreme emotions in your soul. Weight loss is one such book. Right from its first page I could feel some emotions that grew stronger with each passing page, that of disgust and nausea.
Thankfully I did not waste money while buying the book (it was sent by Readers Digest), or it would have been the worst way possible to waste money.
The book, by its name and cover are far too misleading. It seems like a book written by an extremely disturbed kinky teenager who needs desperate help.
It is supposed to be ‘funny’ i guess, but it is so bizarre that I could not even manage a smile.
September 13, 2016
No. This is not a weight-loss guide. This is the tale of a pervert named Bhola. Read at your own risk.
This story is full of moments when the reader may shut the book and go "Whoa!" or "WHAT?!?" or "They are all bloody perverts!".
Upamanyu Chatterjee is brilliant in his wit, philosophic musings and most of all, dark humor. I was surprised to find myself growing quite fond of Bhola, the anti-hero, towards the end. He is not in denial about his perverse state-of-mind and his view of himself is quite derogatory. If that is not charming, I don't know what is.
This book is not for everyone. There. You have been warned.
This story is full of moments when the reader may shut the book and go "Whoa!" or "WHAT?!?" or "They are all bloody perverts!".
Upamanyu Chatterjee is brilliant in his wit, philosophic musings and most of all, dark humor. I was surprised to find myself growing quite fond of Bhola, the anti-hero, towards the end. He is not in denial about his perverse state-of-mind and his view of himself is quite derogatory. If that is not charming, I don't know what is.
This book is not for everyone. There. You have been warned.
August 20, 2013
Firstly, this is not a book on losing weight: P It’s about a guy who had an obsession of losing weight. This is a grotesque book which is at the higher end of dark humor. If you liked “English August” and “The White Tiger” you might possible like this book. The book has a lot of explicit content and descriptions of demented minds. It’s not for the people who like regular light hearted works. The end is kind of abrupt which made me rate English August (by the same author) and “The White Tiger” above this book.
April 9, 2015
The character of Bhola is unbelievable! He does crazy things in his perverted world and it will take some gall to digest it all. I am glad I could get past it and enjoy the freaky black humour in the story. There are some dialogues which are quite funny and memorable.
Yet there are some underlying questions regarding life, death, ageing, tantric practices and existential mumbo jumbo. Some of the tragedies reminded me of Garp.
It was interesting how he suffered boomerangs after his sins. I had to finish the book.
Yet there are some underlying questions regarding life, death, ageing, tantric practices and existential mumbo jumbo. Some of the tragedies reminded me of Garp.
It was interesting how he suffered boomerangs after his sins. I had to finish the book.
November 16, 2025
Read it a lifetime ago when I was in Hyderabad. In fact, I bought the book from Crosswords in City Center, Banjara Hills, encouraged by English August by the same author which I had read while in college in Chennai. I recollect the book as being irreverent, lascivious, and funny with some dark moments.
January 27, 2008
I started reading this, then i fell asleep. the book is as boring as mud. trying to get through the first 100 pages was a challenge. The other 300 were absolute torture. It's not that nothing happens or that the writing isn't good. It's the fact that what does happen is totally inane!
April 13, 2016
Irreverent - The main character's whims and fantasies are outrageous, but he's aware of it.
Second part of the book lost my interest. The ending is bleak; I think I didn't quite get it, and was impatient to end it.
Second part of the book lost my interest. The ending is bleak; I think I didn't quite get it, and was impatient to end it.
December 6, 2009
It was not at all believable but hilariously, imaginatively obscene.
March 17, 2011
I felt nauseated by the book and stopped reading it. It is bad.
June 16, 2012
Please. If I wanted to read all about sexual perversions I would have just read Freud.
October 6, 2012
Its different
July 4, 2015
I just couldnt read. Felt quite revolted by the unnecessary allusions. may be the book is ok later but i just gave up reading after a few pages
July 18, 2015
The concept is good. but the narrative sucks you to a boring death. couldn't go past page 145
October 20, 2016
Abandoned.
May 29, 2014
not worth it..let down if u have read "english august"
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews