The Impressionist

by Hari Kunzru

The antihero of The Impressionist, Hari Kunzru's daringly ambitious first novel, is half English and half Indian. In the Raj of the 1920s, the racial and social divides are enormous, but Pran Nath is able to bridge them, crossing from one side to another in a series of reinventions of his own personality. He begins as the spoiled child of an Indian lawyer, but circumstances thrust him out of his pampered adolescence into the teeming and dangerous life of the streets. After a bewildering period as one of the pawns in Machiavellian political and sexual scheming in the decadent court of a minor Maharajah, he escapes to Bombay. There he is taken up by a half-demented Scottish missionary and his wife, but Pran Nath prefers to slope off to the city's red-light district whenever he can. During a time of riot and bloodshed, the chance of re-creating himself as an English schoolboy destined for public school and Oxford presents itself, and he takes it. But this is not his final transformation.

In certain ways Kunzru is almost too ambitious. There is so much crammed onto the pages of The Impressionist that some of it, almost inevitably, doesn't work as well as it might. However, as the shapeshifting Pran Nath moves from one identity to another, knockabout farce mixes with satire, social comedy with parody. And beneath the comic exuberance and linguistic invention, there is an intelligent and occasionally moving examination of notions of self, identity, and what it means to belong to a class or society. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, India, Asia, Literary Fiction, Historical, British Literature

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Hari Mohan Nath Kunzru (born 1969) is a British novelist and journalist, author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission and My Revolutions. Of mixed English and Kashmiri Pandit ancestry, he grew up in Essex. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford University, then gained an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[zed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long flight book 1.

I had a long journey to the UK for family reasons. Direct the flight takes 24 hours, but I was offered the longer 30-hour trip with 2 days in Bangkok on the way home for a significant less quantity of my hard-earned dollars. I took the long journey and the saved cash. But what book to read on this long journey? I selected The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru for the first part of the trip. It seemed a good premise, at least via the blurb, and looked easy to read.

The story is a life story of a boy born in India under the name Pran in the very late 1800’s and takes us through to the 1920s. Pran’s is a life of change from a high caste born Indian to becoming an Englishman, or does he? The title is significant. Pran the impressionist is as much about seeking as to what he is not as to what he is. His search is a book that is very thematic of race, religion, caste, colonialism and how all this affects identity. There were some very witty moments in this read, the chapter on the buffoonery of the British officer class in one chapter had me laughing out loud. The chapter on a tribe in Africa whose share market instincts was a complete satire on the system that dominates our western world was very very clever.

Many characters appear in Prans life and their backstories are very well told. I really enjoyed the husband and wife McFarlane’s who lived in poverty-stricken Bombay, he to preach the Christian bible in as bombastic a way as is the Scottish Protestant way and she to go as native as possible, all this to have interesting consequences as to their relationship and that of their house guest the main protagonist.

Pran is characterised in such a way that I found little to like or dislike about him, he was this strange figure changing impressions of himself in that he attempted to blend into whatever situation came his way. He became all things to all people that he met in his life’s journey, even if he wanted to or not..

Recommended as a good read for a long flight as it is readable, thematic and witty enough to while those hours away.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subcontinental Hyphenate

Pran Nath Razdan is the hyphenated “blacky-white” Anglo-Indian son of an English father and an Indian mother.

For much of his early life, he lives in India, where he is not quite accepted by his Indian peers, because of his fair skin. Equally, the expatriates can detect that something about him (his demeanour, his accent) is “not quite right”, thus he is scorned by both Indian and Englishman.

Attempting to Bridge the Gap

Pran endures multiple sequential incarnations in his life, including a stint in England under the name of Jonathan Bridgeman, a deceased friend of short acquaintance whose identity and place in life he has stolen after his death. Pran receives most of his schooling here, eventually taking a degree in history at Oxford, where he meets a professor of anthropology (the father of a love interest) who invites him on an expedition to Africa, during which he discovers that his impersonation or impression of a privileged Englishman has in fact been at the expense of the one true, unique identity he ever had.

Shot by Both Sides

While I’ve long believed that the person of the future will increasingly be and look Eurasian, this deftly written novel shows how easy it is to fall between two stools, to suffer from chauvinism or be metaphorically shot by both sides. At a time when empires are collapsing everywhere, it seems that genuine nobility is to be found in selfhood and character rather than in social status, caste or rank.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This proved to be an exceptional novel to read while waiting at an Immigration Office. Such a strange place, much like Old Trafford, the offices are unmistakingly dream factories. It would be unpleasant to wake most of the occupants. A friend from England raved over this novel and while I enjoyed such, it didn't sweep me away in a gale. It does make one ponder about those souls waiting in silence in bureaucratic queues. The veils of identity are quick and fungible. The consequences, unfortunately, are a different narrative.

[Sarah Cypher]

This book was recommended to me by a well-traveled, foreign-policy-savvy author friend of mine, and I found it to be one of my favorite books this year. It's a smart, wry, vivid, take on the hero's journey, where the hero is a fair-skinned Indian who seeks to pass as an Englishman during the Raj era.

The way the narrator follows the nameless (or rather, many-named) protagonist reminded me of Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, in that he's somewhat of a tabula rasa, an observer of society who writes its customs on himself. Yet this narrator allows itself humorous detours into the secondary characters' POVs, sampling opinions and needling egos, gradually constructing an emotional portrait of what colonialism feels like if you're the colonized.

Kunzru loves irony, and without spoiling the ending, I'll add that it is one of the "be careful what you wish for" variety. In a way, that's how I felt about this book, too, and why I didn't give it five stars--the story flowed into a tragically logical climax, and allowed us to see some vengeance on the characters we loved to hate. Yet when I closed the book, those satisfying choices--Kunzru's characters, sensibility, and deft plotting--all added up to a slightly empty ending. It may have been the point, but part of me longed for the unapologetic beauty I found in the last pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, another big book about colonialism.

I was excited to discover Hari Kunzru, and if I find myself staring at another of his novels in the bookstore, I'll probably pick it up.

[Bookish Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

It might seem ludicrous to give this 2 stars, I really tried with it. This book began with such promise - the tale of the Impressionist's mother and the coloniser, the goddesses and chaos. It was all beautiful and strange.

But as the book progressed it became harder to read, the Impressionist takes on all these superfluous lives that feel impossible to follow. It's as though this is a novel made of short stories - each one less compelling than the one before it. I appreciate the sentiment: exposing the ills of empire, the life of someone living in-between and without a true identity. I just believe this wasn't executed well, reading felt like trawling.

[Ming · Rating 4 out of 5]

a wonderful book that is chaotic at times but suits the thinking and behavior of the main character navigating chaos. clever and quite imaginative throughout and enjoyable. the scene of the tiger hunt was absolutely hilarious. also the sections about anthropology provide an extremely sharp and on-point critique.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A question of identity…

In 1903, during a torrential and deadly flood in monsoon season, an Englishman and an Indian woman both seek shelter in a cave beside a raging river. With death hovering, they find themselves carried away by the moment. When the Englishman comes to his senses and realises he has done something no honourable, upright Englishman of the Empire should do with a native woman, he flings himself into the river and drowns. The woman, Amrita, is rescued and continues on her journey to her arranged marriage, keeping secret that she is pregnant with the Englishman’s child. She dies in childbirth but the child, Pran, lives, growing up as the pampered and spoiled son of a rich man. Everyone admires his beautiful pale skin, almost as white as the whites. But one person knows the secret of his origin – Amrita’s maid – and when Pran, now a teenager, attempts to ravish her daughter, the maid tells Pran’s “father” the truth about him. A few days later the father dies of the influenza which is sweeping the world, and the family eject Pran from the home he expected to inherit, leaving him destitute and alone. This is the story of Pran’s life, and through him a satirical look at the impact of colonialism and the position of the “blackie-whites” – the mixed race Anglo Indians, caught between two cultures, not fully accepted by either.

The book is written in a series of separate sections, which is how Pran lives his life. The pampered rich kid becomes a desperate beggar, who is taken in by a brothel-keeper and forced into male prostitution. From there he is sold to a rich Indian as a Hijra – a transgender eunuch, more or less – which is not an identity he chooses for himself. Fortunately for him, this phase of his life is over before the eunuch bit is carried out. I’m not going to go through all the phases since that’s the story really, so too much detail would be spoilery. But in essence, he eventually ditches his Indian identity and embraces his Englishness, becoming Robert, then Jonathan along the way. He is intelligent, resourceful and chameleon-like, able to seem as if he’s fitting in by a process of learning and mimicking the manners of those around him wherever he happens to be.

I found some of the sections more successful than others, which I feel is probably down to my subjective preferences rather than any unevenness in the book. It is satire, and my track record with satire is distinctly wobbly. Sometimes while I could see the humour in situations Pran found himself in, the darkness of them made me unable to feel amused. Pran starts out distinctly unlikeable and while I grew to have a lot of sympathy with the way he was treated by both cultures, I never fully got over that initial dislike.

However, in every section it’s a wonderful portrayal of a different part of society, be it among the sex-workers of India, the missionaries of the Raj or the students of Oxford. In the lighter sections, I could fully enjoy the humour and appreciate the insight into each culture. For me, the Indian sections were the more interesting, although also the darker, because the book goes well beyond the familiar territory of most British colonial fiction into the worlds of the immensely rich and the devastatingly poor of the “real” India of the time, living alongside but not part of the world of the Raj. Kunzru mocks the Raj pretty mercilessly, though subtly, but he also mocks the rich and powerful Indians, so it doesn’t ever feel like a polemical anti-British rant. As a result, it is a much more effective critique of the impact of colonialism on individuals, both colonised and colonisers, than most of the unsubtle post-colonial diatribes we’ve been subjected to in recent years. The divide here, as it always is in life, is between the rich and powerful, whether British or Indian, and the people they exploit.

But the main subject he is examining is identity and belonging, and how intertwined and inseparable those two things are. Pran/Robert/Jonathan is a shapeshifter, a permanent outsider who is skilful enough to appear as an insider in any setting. But who is he? If there comes a point when his wardrobe-full of identities falls away and leaves him naked – who is he then? And Kunzru makes this question wider – can the identity of a culture survive intact when subjected to old-style colonialism or the newer colonialism of enforced capitalism, or will it break and be lost? He doesn’t give us answers – he simply makes us ponder the questions.

Another excellent, entertaining and thought-provoking book from Kunzru, one of the most intelligent authors of our time. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[Bob Peragallo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very hard read.....I could not get this book into my head, I speed read the last half of the book simple to get to the end. I gave it my best try, but am unable to recommend this book. The character development was poor, the wording was strange.

Sorry.....Far to much good good stuff to read to be bothered with this one.

[Alwaysthequietones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of The Impressionist is a refreshing, interesting and very entertaining read. The author paints such colourful pictures of the things that happen to the central character - the people he encounters, the places he visits and the situations in which he finds himself, so lost that he allows himself to be blown along at the whim of fate like a leaf on the breeze - that it doesn't matter to the reader if he's not a likeable protagonist. The pace and wit of the writing are excellent and the social/racial/historical observations are sharp and enjoyable.

However, reading this book feels rather like floating down a river; the upper reaches are tumultuous, fast and fun, but then the river broadens so that the rest of the journey is slow, meandering and ultimately disappointing.

I couldn't help feeling that some of the especially long and tedious meanders in the second half (descriptions and back-story for peripheral characters, for example) would have benefited from braver editing. There are still little gems of observation and hilarious similes, but they're fewer and farther between.

As for the ending... having invested so many hours of my life reading about this person, I wanted a more satisfying pay-off. It didn't have to be happy. It didn't even have to be conclusive. But this? This looked too much as though the author didn't know how to end the story and so allowed it to fizzle out in a puddle of confusion. Having journeyed all the way downriver, I wanted at least a glimpse of the ocean.

[Robyn]

An incredibly detailed, background-heavy tale about a mixed-race boy born in India at the turn of the 20th century, “The Impressionist” is Hari Kunzru’s reverse take on Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”. Pran Nath’s privileged life is abruptly brought to an end when a servant reveals his true origins; his father, far from the affluent Indian money-lender who has brought him up, was in fact a deceased English traveller whose path crossed that of Pran’s long-dead mother some 15 years previously. Cast unceremoniously into the street, Pran is forced to survive in any way he can, whilst attempting to discover who he is and where he rightfully belongs.

Covering a wide range of locations, from Agra to London, Bombay to the British countryside, “The Impressionist” is a deliciously rich taste of early 20th century life and all the contradictions it embodied. Pran swings from high-caste Indian boy, through street dweller to middle-class Englishman, each incarnation no more comfortable or less wrought with difficulties than the last. With remarkable ease, one story blends into the next, Pran’s transformations unquestionably believable. Kunzru’s talent is at its most effective when describing the new surroundings in which Pran finds himself, as well as managing to inspire sympathy and understanding in the reader for a boy who is not at all likeable, superficially or otherwise.

Some points are rammed home with somewhat less subtlety than is perhaps intended; those who are inflicted with the disease named religion come off rather badly, as does anyone in a position of power. In fact, most of the characters are essentially unpleasant, or at least enormously flawed, although Kunrzru does his best to get us on their sides with a plethora of background information for certain cherry-picked individuals. It is these sub-plots which make up the real heart of the novel.

Skin colour is, of course, vital to the piece, but in itself doesn’t form the crux of the story, with Kunzru providing representatives of the good, the bad and the ugly from every race throughout Pran’s meandering journey. Instead, it is the more abstract concept of fitting in, placement and acceptability which drives the story forwards. Even this, though explored to its furthest regions, is never quite brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Some characters, like Paul Goertler the Jew, are voluntary outsiders; others find themselves deliberately shunned or accidentally sidelined due to circumstance or accident. Despite this, the reader still wonders: is it necessary for everybody to be an impressionist in order to find their place in society? Or is this inescapably purgatorial existence solely the lot of Pran and his fellow mixed-race orphans?

“The Impressionist” gives us a fascinating insight into the colour-coded world of the first quarter of the 20th century. It details the understandably fraught relationship between England and India, and the romanticised attitudes held towards each other from both sides. Kunzru's simultaneous love and exasperation for both India and Britain is tangible and it is this passion and honesty which lays such a solid foundation for what is ultimately a collection of individual yet well-linked, beautifully detailed stories.

[Kristel · Rating 3 out of 5]

(I forgot that I've written this review way back in 2007! Young!Me is quaintly embarrassing. I don't have enough critical distance from this, but I sure hope I've improved as a writer.)

I’ve been reading a lot about Britain lately, or at least novels set in Britain and its former colonies. The Impressionist traces the life of Pran Nath, a boy with British and Indian blood, with his attempts to survive the societies that are alternately seduced and repulsed by him. He assumes different guises throughout his life: first, as the son of a wealthy Brahmin, then as Rukhsana, a eunuch-to-be in the crumbling Kingdom of Fatehpur, then as the adopted son of Scottish missionaries named Bobby. Finally, he assumes the identity of a dead man, giving him the opportunity to leave India for the rarefied life in Oxford. His final metamorphosis takes him to the deepest jungles of Africa, the darkest reaches of the British Empire. The novel is about the complete dissolution of self, gender, race, and culture, an anti-Bildungsroman.

“…Bobby is too intrigued to be offended. What do wogs smell like? Is there a typical English smell?… Face buried in burra mems’ smalls and burra sahibs’ dirty shirts, he finally puts a name to it. Rancid butter. With perhaps a hint of raw beef. The underlying whiff of empire.”

The premise itself has an amount of seduction to it, probably one of the reasons I picked up the book in the first place. Throughout reading, however, I could definitely sense an unevenness of tone. It seems as if the author couldn’t decide if it would become a piercing social satire or a dreamy tapestry of exoticism. Personally, I think he excels more in satire. The mixture may be a conscious decision, but even as Hari Kunzru occasionally manages to marry these elements exquisitely, it more often produces a discordant rhythm.

The one aspect that really resonated for me was the theme of miscegenation and how those who are born Anglo-Indian are anathema for both empires. As if the mixture of blood implies a possible weakness in their respective armors of superiority. Also interesting to note is how many of Britain's empire-building projects–military, bureaucratic, even scientific endeavors–are not treated as a product of a rational society, but more as a collective neurosis. Perhaps I can discuss this at a later time, preferably backed up by anthropological texts.

For all the novel's faults, Hari Kunzru does know how to turn a phrase. Many scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, with many of the jokes made with deadpan delivery, a parody of the tone that Rudyard Kipling and the likes used to employ. And while Pran Nath himself is hit-or-miss depending on the identity he inhabits, the reader is drawn by his bumbling opportunism, as well as his despair at never fitting in.

[Sue Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I was going to like this but just can’t get through the satirical stuff.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The flyleaf describes this as a "picaresque" tale. It's the story of Pran Nath, who grows up as a privileged, rich Brahman in the India of the Raj. When we first meet him at fifteen years old in 1918, he's contemplating rape: Somehow looking is no longer enough... He could grab her, and pull her down on the bolsters. There would be a fuss, of course, but his father could smooth it over. She is only a servant, after all.

And there I think is my core problem with this book. Style-wise this is well-written, with the present tense lending it both some lyricism and distance, and plot-wise it goes interesting places with interesting themes of culture, race and identity. Pran is actually the result of a sexual encounter between his mother and an Englishman. When this is discovered at fifteen, he's thrown into the streets, and must continually reinvent himself. He passes from sexual slavery to passing himself off as an Oxford schoolboy. When we're taken from high to low to high again, it helps a lot to have a sympathetic protagonist, some endearing characters, but that's not the case here. So much in this book is sordid, repelling and it made this a slog to read despite interesting depictions of the late British Empire.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Narratives usually show a protagonist grow, develop and reach self-knowledge. The Impressionist heads in the opposite direction as Pran gradually erases himself while perfecting his impression of an Englishman.

This is a book about race, class and empire which is never didactic. We do get touches of magic realism, farce (particularly the tiger hunt), and what struck me as a witty deconstruction of the madness of modern financial markets through a description of the fictitious African tribe, the Fotse. Their customs around inheritance sound remarkably like the futures, derivatives and hedges that at two or three decade intervals crash our own economies.

Lots to see and enjoy here.

[Anna]

DNF

Life's too short for books as boring as this one.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

45th book read in 2025

The other day I was listening to an interview with Katie Kitamura, a novelist I have meant to read for some time, who happens to be married to Hari Kunzru. I have read four of his novels and was impressed each time. There is a unique and strong flavor to his work that speaks to me.

So, I made a list of Hari’s novels and a list of Katie’s novels and conceived of another one of my mini reading projects. Read each one of the novels by each author. I have a fascination about authors who are married.

Hari started earlier than Katie and I happened to have The Impressionist, his debut novel, on my shelves. It is an impressive beginning.

One definition of an impressionist is someone who does imitations of well-known people, usually for entertainment. The main character of the novel, Pran, was born of a British father and an Indian woman, but his mother passed him off as the son of her husband, a wealthy, high-caste Indian. When a servant reveals Pran’s origins to this man, he is tossed into the street and thus begins his life as an impressionist begins. In Pran’s case, he does imitations of well-known types of people, playing on his fair skin and good looks to get him through.

I could compare this novel to books I have read set in India (Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie), to whole-life fictional biographies (The Romantic by William Boyd), to sad tales of boys from bad beginnings (David Copperfield by Charles Dickens), you get the idea.

What I found distinctive here was Kunzru’s examination of the mixed-race dilemma and how that impacts a person’s sense of self. Pran is preternaturally good at taking on identities and surviving horrific circumstances, but he is never free from fear of failure, and he can never be sure of love. The tale makes the reader want him to succeed and find himself, all the while fearing he is doomed.

As a debut, The Impressionist is impressive! (I know I already said that, but it is worth saying again.) The book is a signal to readers of the author’s future concerns in his work. I am glad I read it.

[Ingrid RB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prøvde virkelig å like denne boka til ingen nytte. Første halvdel var fengende og interessant, men den lille interessen jeg hadde dabbet av relativt raskt. Snodig hovedkarakter og enda rarere plott

[Rama Ramaswamy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm so confused as to what I feel about this book - 2 stars to the book are solely because the ending is too bizzare, so incomplete. It was quite disappointing, actually.

Hari Kunzru has written a very good book - his narrative ebbs and flows but when it flows, it is a delight to keep reading. His language is impressive, his style of writing seems evolved even though it is his debut book, there is wry wit in places. On the flip side, his characters are terrible, there is too much of unnecessary prose in places. In fact, almost all of the characters in the book are repelling. The protagonist is himself the antagonist, the anti-hero; you cannot like him or sympathise with him - that's just the way Kunzru intended it to be. He moves from character to character as the story flows, impressing upon himself the persona, mannerisms, situations of the person he has taken on. Though it does seem like he happens to be just at the right place and at the right time. He doesn't have a good life - moving from being a half-white half-brown son in the times of the Raj to an affluent pandit's son, from a male child prostitute in women's clothes to a servant at a Christian missionary's home in Bombay, then transforming into a British student at Oxford University to working with a professor in a god forsaken land studying a dying black tribe in Africa - Pran Nath aka Rukhsana aka Jonathan keeps changing his persona to suit his situations and to protect his being, while also constantly trying to find his place, one identity that is his's alone. It is poignant, I suppose, but you don't really feel for the character.

There were places where I just wanted to quit reading and ran away to find happiness in other books, but I kept going only because I realy liked Hari Kunzru's writing style. But like I said, the end just didn't work for me. A big downer at the end of a book that could've been epic.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, and for the first half of it, I did. But when a book is as centered around one character as this one is (despite the author thinking you need to know the full history of every person he crosses paths with, which I found unnecessary and distracting), the character can't just be interesting. I need more than that, and this book just didn't deliver. While the concept of the character was interesting, it went no deeper than a concept - the Impressionist, who puts on lives and takes them off like clothing. The book never goes deeper than that, though, at least not in a meaningful way. The character is all surface and the book is ultimately unsatisfying because while you want to care about the character, there's nothing there for you to latch onto. The end of the book left me feeling confused and unsatisfied - it made no sense to end it where it did because nothing FINAL had happened.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about an Indian boy born to a life of riches who is found to be half white and illegitimate and thrown out to a life of begging and then sold to prostitution and then a eunuch. He reinvents himself as a fix-it man in the red light district, then an Englishman and then assumes someone else's identity going to public school then England. He falls in love with an anthropologists daughter and joins a trip to Africa only to find the daughter falls for a Parisian Negro as he has more soul and he is too boring and English. With this and his trip to Africa when he is firmly on the other side of the colonial divide his sense of belief and identity crumble. A book about colonialism, gradations of colour and about most of all identity and how an impressionist is nothing

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Many moments that are terrific and inventive, but overall it goes nowhere.

[Badkismati · Rating 1 out of 5]

książka, w której każdy gej chce gwałcić małych chłopców. Um okay.

[Madeleine Decker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceived during a freak flood in the middle of the desert, privilege young Pran is seen growing up in a rich family in Agra. After being kicked out for being a total spoiled ass, he ends up in a palace looking like a hysterical large pink iced cake, in a Scottish Mission in a Bombay slum, in Oxford and ends up in the middle of nowhere.

To survive he alternatively shifts from a rich Indian boy to a lower than nothing one, a male slave prostitute disguised as a woman, a servant coupled with a half pimp until he loses completely his identity to become an Oxford student.

This shape shifting from one identity to another is triggered by a series of bad luck coupled with finding protectors with more or less good intentions.
Never being one or the other, changing sex, names and nationalities, he brings in himself the duality of being a ‘brown’ trapped in a ‘ white’ envelope. He lost himself in that ambiguity and remained unfit for the world until he vanishes physically and spiritually.
_____________________________________________________________________________
I bought this book in Johannesburg in 2006 and since then, it has followed me everywhere. I always have half a shelf this big of unread books, just in case. Less than that, I feel insecure. My thing.

Finally, I picked it up and was thrilled by the writing, very upbeat, colourful and full of surprises, and always wanting to know what next will happen to Pran-Rukhsana-Chandra-Pretty Bobby-Jonathan.

Unfortunately, this enthusiasm ends when he arrives in Oxford. A little boring, a lame love story and even a weak description of the colonialism in that beginning of the 20th century. The writing also ends up with looses ends.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Impressionist was written very well in parts, and in others, poorly. If you can get past those parts, then you can view the novel, on whole, as interesting.

I started off disliking the character, but then you end up liking him by the end of the first part of the book. You feel sorry for him and his life evolves. The second and third part of the book are hard to get through, but after that the story moves on more congruently and smoothly.

The ending was a bit perplexing, and I feel like the relationship he had was not as compelling as it could have been. I still enjoyed the metamorphosis he went through to find his own self. The character was complex and multi-dimensional; his plights and adventures well thought-out.

[Becca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know that I'll finish this book, though I'm probably 70% of the way done. I just don't really like it and feel like I'm forcing myself to plow through. I just dislike the main character and find a lack of redeeming qualities or relatable characteristics in him. So I'm done... for now, at least.

[J. F. Rott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Britain has pioneered the science of attaching moral qualities to physical and behavioural characteristics, and employed this system thoroughly in its colonial past. The politics of accent in the UK still show signs of this today - there are many methods to social stratification, and a lot of rules to follow in order to be classified correctly. As somebody living in the UK since 2019, I have had a lot of fun modifying my accent to fit in. It is thrilling to pass for a native. Such experience is exemplified perfectly in The Impressionist.

The writing style is very meandering, fun, full of imagery and side characters and vivid lore coming out of nowhere. I enjoyed that a lot. Pran/Bobby/Jonathan, despite having no traits of his own, becomes a fascinating protagonist to follow, and difficult picture during his transformation sometimes. It's hard to imagine somebody as simultaneously Indian and English, and the reader finds a need to constantly modify the social classifications they have implicitly given the characters.

Some of the environments and life chapters seem to work better than others, but wrap up very well in the overall story arc. The title reveal is chilling. 8/10.

[Harshita Kale · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25
The idea of the story was really very unique and one of a kind. Set around the turn of the century in India, Pran Nath, an Anglo-Indian who hitherto had been very rich with not a care in the world, suddenly finds himself without a roof over his head, a family, and a job. We follow his story as he travels the world- Mumbai, London, Paris, Oxford and Africa and his identity keeps shifting with the beginning of each new phase in his life. The author does a good job blending the identities into one another with ease, and I didn't feel for even an instant as if the transitions are rough. It is a journey of travel and self-discovery.
For me, the execution of this great idea was not quite up to the mark and I certainly would have enjoyed it more had there been more dialogue and less description. A condensed form of this novel would have appealed to me more. Nevertheless, a debut novel nicely put out into the world.

[Liam Ostermann]

I read two thirds of this novel ages ago when I bought it and then things intervened and I put aside and stuff happened and by the time I picked it up again I had lost the thread so need to start at the beginning again. It was really good, I enjoyed it, I think I had a few reservations but I am definitely going to read it again so I would recommend it - I just won't rate until I properly review it but I would be sure it will be at least four stars.

[DebbyL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully awful insight into English Empire state of mind, as well as the unjustness of privilege. Beautifully written, with rich description and humour. The Impressionist himself is a credible “blank canvas” with just enough humanity to keep me caring about him and his precarious life.
A very few turns of events in a story packed with turns of events, are perhaps too much of a coincidence, but also part of the vivid colour of the text.
Know who you are. Be who you are. (Well, perhaps not as long as you are abused and oppressed! Then luck and ingenuity are useful.)
Good book!

[Shaz S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blurb on the back: Fathered, through circuitous circumstances, by an Englishman, Pran Nath Razdan, the boy who will become the Impressionist, was passed off by his Indian mother as the child of her husband, a wealthy man of high caste. Growing up spoiled in a life of luxury just downriver from the Taj Mahal, at fifteen the news of Pran's true parentage is revealed to his father and he is tossed out into the street -- a pariah and an outcast. Thus begins an extraordinary, near mythical journey of a young man who must re-invent himself to survive -- not once, but many times.

Imprisoned by a brothel and dressed in women's clothes, his sensuous beauty is exploited as he is made to become Rukhsana, a pawn in a game between colony and empire. To a depraved British major he becomes Clive, an object of desire taught to be a model English schoolboy. Escaping to Bombay he begins a double life as Robert, dutiful foster child to a Scottish missionary couple, and as Pretty Bobby, errand boy and sometime pimp to the tawdry women of the city's most notorious district.

But as political unrest begins to stir, Pran finds himself in the company of a doomed young Englishman -- an orphan named Jonathan Bridgeman. Having learned quickly that perception is a ready replacement for reality, Pran soon finds himself on a boat bound for Southampton where, with Bridgeman's passport, he will begin again. First in London, then at Oxford, the Impressionist hones his chameleon-like skills, making himself whoever and whatever he needs to be to obtain what he desires.

From Victorian India to Edwardian London, from an expatriate community of black Americans in Paris to a hopeless expedition to study a lost tribe of Africa, Hari Kunzru's unforgettable novel dazzles with its artistry and wit while it challenges with its insights into what it means to be Indian or English, black or white, and every degree that lies between them.

My Thoughts: I tried really hard to like this book, I really did. It had all the elements for what makes a book delightful to me but somehow the whole was less than the sum of the parts. The book is broadly overwritten, which can be a good thing but in Kunzru's case it's just oversimplification to the extreme. He has dumb-downed the subject matter to such a point that at one point I reckon he was just explaining tennis shoes to the readers. With better editing, the book could have been a lot crispier. And in the first and second chapters why are some Hindi words italised and not the others?

I like the anti-hero, the protagonist in all his different avatars. I can empathize with him in his search for a quintessential identity and a sense of belonging. I like how quickly he acclimatizes to his new lives as the book progresses without any hint of his former selves. His "adventures" though seem forced and too well orchestrated. I liked reading the first half of the book because it is full of little tidbits from the British Raj and life in a royal court during that era. The ending was a little open-ended for me, I'm afraid. I guess I was looking for a complete closure to the book and to Pran's problems but may be the author had a sequel in mind which he never got around to work on again.