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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.
437 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Upamanyu Chatterjee
18 books207 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 - 30 of 35 reviews
December 2, 2007
The identity of the book lies in its growth; Eight years in the service, beloved August, has grown into a well rounded Sri Augustya Sen saab; the confusion has given way to charming cynicism which helps him to keep his nose just above the waters and take one day at a time , literally. Unlike English, August, the narrative voice isn’t primarily singular, but fragmented making Augustya an obscure cog in a massive juggernaut of a fleet that is the Indian bureaucracy.
It is easy to see why the book has been unpopular, or rather, not as popular as its prequel; it lacks a centre, the narration is diffuse while the characters conveniently drift in and out. But still, the book is absolutely brilliant for Chatterjee remains faithful to one of the most complicated subjects that can ever hoped to be captured in any language, let alone English ie the behemoth of governance in India. If English, August was a delicate outside-in peep into the Indian bureaucracy through the august eyes of English , Mammaries is a vast chronicle of the functioning of Indian bureaucracy and its hilarious yet inevitable association with the Indian politics. All of course captured in Chatterjee’s brilliant prose alternating between slapstick and satire.
Had I read this book a bit earlier or even later, I would have missed the grand joke that runs through page after page in the book. Clearly one should have a useless drain for a mind to appreciate the beauty of this book, well, thankfully I have.
It is easy to see why the book has been unpopular, or rather, not as popular as its prequel; it lacks a centre, the narration is diffuse while the characters conveniently drift in and out. But still, the book is absolutely brilliant for Chatterjee remains faithful to one of the most complicated subjects that can ever hoped to be captured in any language, let alone English ie the behemoth of governance in India. If English, August was a delicate outside-in peep into the Indian bureaucracy through the august eyes of English , Mammaries is a vast chronicle of the functioning of Indian bureaucracy and its hilarious yet inevitable association with the Indian politics. All of course captured in Chatterjee’s brilliant prose alternating between slapstick and satire.
Had I read this book a bit earlier or even later, I would have missed the grand joke that runs through page after page in the book. Clearly one should have a useless drain for a mind to appreciate the beauty of this book, well, thankfully I have.
August 1, 2025
In the sweltering heat of an April afternoon in 2009, I first encountered Upamanyu Chatterjee’s The Mammaries of the Welfare State sprawled on a bench in the National Library of Kolkata.
I had never read 'English August', the novel to which Mammaries is a sequel, but a friend had narrated enough of its absurdities for me to feel equipped. What followed was not a mere reading—it was a full-blown intellectual confrontation with one of the most corrosively sidesplitting portrayals of the Indian state I had ever encountered.
If The Last Burden was about familial rot, Mammaries was about institutional entropy—the endgame of a postcolonial democracy that promised welfare and delivered grotesque dysfunction.
Chatterjee’s 2000 novel is many things—a satire, a tragicomedy, a bureaucratic horror story, a postcolonial lamentation—but above all, it is a deeply uncomfortable mirror held up to the state. In its pages, Agastya Sen—now older, wearier, less stoned—floats through the slime-ridden corridors of India’s government machinery, a machinery that is neither oiled nor moving but somehow always in motion, always generating paperwork and failure.
What makes The Mammaries of the Welfare State so uniquely powerful is Chatterjee’s signature style: a prose dense with irony, deeply cynical, and sharply intelligent.
His sentences move like overloaded trains, rambling through stations of satire, irony, grotesquerie, and bitter truth. Unlike the hopeful political novels of the Nehruvian era, this one knows that the centre cannot hold—and doesn't care if it does.
To situate Mammaries in the bigger literary landscape, let’s consider five companion texts that echo, challenge, or parallel its themes. Each of these comparative readings allows us to see Chatterjee’s novel not only as a unique product of Indian English fiction but also as a participant in the broader conversation about power, decay, and the absurdity of systems:
1. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs Rag Darbari (Shrilal Shukla): Both novels are satires of the Indian state, but they target different geographies and cultural milieus. Rag Darbari explores rural governance, while Mammaries satirises the urban, post-liberalisation bureaucracy. Shukla’s prose is colloquial and witty; Chatterjee’s is elevated and corrosive. Yet both authors show how democracy in India becomes a façade, a game of manipulation, a system that eats its young. Where Shukla uses rustic idioms to deconstruct the mythology of Gandhian idealism, Chatterjee employs English irony to dismantle the dreams of Nehruvian socialism. One laughs in recognition, the other in exhaustion.
2. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs Animal Farm (George Orwell): Chatterjee and Orwell are spiritual cousins in cynicism. While Orwell wraps his critique in allegory, Chatterjee does it in grotesque realism. Animal Farm is mournful, disappointed in the betrayal of revolution. Mammaries doesn’t believe in revolution at all. There’s no Snowball here, no hope of rebuilding the windmill. The welfare state, in Chatterjee’s hands, is a lactating mother whose milk is corrupted and who cannot be weaned. Both novels mock the language of governance—how slogans and directives mask inaction and decay. But Orwell is didactic, while Chatterjee is gleefully nihilistic.
3. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs Catch-22 (Joseph Heller): This is perhaps the most apt international parallel. Like Heller’s Catch-22, Mammaries is about systems designed to be irrational. Both Agastya Sen and Yossarian are caught in endless bureaucratic loops. In Catch-22, war has become a game of survival through absurd logic. In Mammaries, governance is war by other means—confusing, demoralising, and endless. Both books portray institutional insanity. The difference is cultural: Heller’s madness is mechanised and Western; Chatterjee’s is sprawling and subcontinental, layered with caste, corruption, nepotism, and fake secularism.
4. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry): While Mistry’s novel is realist and deeply empathetic, Mammaries is ironic and scathing. But both are, at their core, postcolonial novels about state failure. In A Fine Balance, individuals are crushed under the wheels of political change. In Mammaries, individuals become the wheels—complicit in their own degradation, bureaucrats of their own despair. Mistry’s India is filled with characters trying to preserve dignity. Chatterjee’s India is peopled by characters who have stopped pretending to care. The tragedy in Mistry is human; in Chatterjee, it is institutional.
5. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs White Teeth (Zadie Smith): Zadie Smith’s novel is more multicultural, concerned with identity and migration. But it shares with Mammaries a sharp postcolonial tongue. Both authors examine the absurdity of national narratives: Smith in the UK, Chatterjee in India. What unites them is their use of satire to expose the limits of post-imperial liberalism. But while Smith’s characters wrestle with identity in a multicultural metropolis, Chatterjee’s are suffocating in the heat of Delhi’s civil service offices. If Smith is writing about the failures of the British Empire’s afterlife, Chatterjee is writing about the failure of India to live up to its independence.
The welfare state in Chatterjee’s vision is not a mechanism of care—it’s an exhausted cow, milked to death by corrupt politicians, overpaid officials, and NGOs with hidden agendas. It is no longer about the redistribution of wealth but about the perpetuation of inefficiency.
The Nehruvian state is reduced to an empty shell—its files yellowing, its officers cynical, and its healthcare system a joke. Unlike earlier generations of Indian fiction that saw hope in reform, Chatterjee offers none. This is a fully post-idealistic novel. There is no Gandhian purity, no Nehruvian vision, only bureaucratic stagnation and moral rot.
Chatterjee’s India is a zombie nation: the form of a state exists, but the soul is missing. The postcolonial promise has decayed into a parody of governance. Elections are held, files are filed, reports are written—but nothing changes.
Chatterjee’s use of English is surgical and excessive. He mimics bureaucratic jargon to mock it, stretching sentences until they break under the weight of their own meaninglessness. It’s a kind of linguistic terrorism—bombing the reader with detail until numbness sets in.
Reading Mammaries in 2009 felt oddly prophetic. India was halfway through the UPA era, corruption scandals were brewing, and the middle class was oscillating between apathy and outrage. The book captured that moment perfectly, as if Chatterjee had bottled the national mood a decade earlier. I remember laughing aloud in the reading room, then catching myself—because the laughter hurt.
It was the same hurt I had felt reading The Last Burden, but magnified and politicised. Where Burden made me confront familial hypocrisy, Mammaries made me question the very scaffolding of the nation-state. It didn’t just mock bureaucrats; it made me suspect that I, too, was part of the farce—one of the many suckling at the mammaries, even if just ideologically.
I didn’t return to English, August until years later. But Mammaries never left me. Its grotesque imagery—the bloated patients in collapsing hospitals, the meaningless policy meetings, the inertia disguised as governance—stayed lodged in my consciousness. It made me look at every government form, every “circular,” every Lok Sabha debate with a new lens of horror.
The Mammaries of the Welfare State is perhaps the most acerbic political novel India has produced. It is the Catch-22 of postcolonial governance, the Animal Farm of the Indian civil service, the Rag Darbari for a globalized, decaying republic. It doesn’t mourn the death of idealism—it performs its autopsy.
What makes it unforgettable is not just its satire but its moral stance: it refuses to pretend that anything will get better. It offers no redemption arc, no catharsis. Just dark, intelligent laughter in the face of national entropy.
In a world where every election promises “good governance,” Mammaries reminds us that governance itself might be the problem. And that, perhaps, is its most radical insight.
I had never read 'English August', the novel to which Mammaries is a sequel, but a friend had narrated enough of its absurdities for me to feel equipped. What followed was not a mere reading—it was a full-blown intellectual confrontation with one of the most corrosively sidesplitting portrayals of the Indian state I had ever encountered.
If The Last Burden was about familial rot, Mammaries was about institutional entropy—the endgame of a postcolonial democracy that promised welfare and delivered grotesque dysfunction.
Chatterjee’s 2000 novel is many things—a satire, a tragicomedy, a bureaucratic horror story, a postcolonial lamentation—but above all, it is a deeply uncomfortable mirror held up to the state. In its pages, Agastya Sen—now older, wearier, less stoned—floats through the slime-ridden corridors of India’s government machinery, a machinery that is neither oiled nor moving but somehow always in motion, always generating paperwork and failure.
What makes The Mammaries of the Welfare State so uniquely powerful is Chatterjee’s signature style: a prose dense with irony, deeply cynical, and sharply intelligent.
His sentences move like overloaded trains, rambling through stations of satire, irony, grotesquerie, and bitter truth. Unlike the hopeful political novels of the Nehruvian era, this one knows that the centre cannot hold—and doesn't care if it does.
To situate Mammaries in the bigger literary landscape, let’s consider five companion texts that echo, challenge, or parallel its themes. Each of these comparative readings allows us to see Chatterjee’s novel not only as a unique product of Indian English fiction but also as a participant in the broader conversation about power, decay, and the absurdity of systems:
1. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs Rag Darbari (Shrilal Shukla): Both novels are satires of the Indian state, but they target different geographies and cultural milieus. Rag Darbari explores rural governance, while Mammaries satirises the urban, post-liberalisation bureaucracy. Shukla’s prose is colloquial and witty; Chatterjee’s is elevated and corrosive. Yet both authors show how democracy in India becomes a façade, a game of manipulation, a system that eats its young. Where Shukla uses rustic idioms to deconstruct the mythology of Gandhian idealism, Chatterjee employs English irony to dismantle the dreams of Nehruvian socialism. One laughs in recognition, the other in exhaustion.
2. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs Animal Farm (George Orwell): Chatterjee and Orwell are spiritual cousins in cynicism. While Orwell wraps his critique in allegory, Chatterjee does it in grotesque realism. Animal Farm is mournful, disappointed in the betrayal of revolution. Mammaries doesn’t believe in revolution at all. There’s no Snowball here, no hope of rebuilding the windmill. The welfare state, in Chatterjee’s hands, is a lactating mother whose milk is corrupted and who cannot be weaned. Both novels mock the language of governance—how slogans and directives mask inaction and decay. But Orwell is didactic, while Chatterjee is gleefully nihilistic.
3. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs Catch-22 (Joseph Heller): This is perhaps the most apt international parallel. Like Heller’s Catch-22, Mammaries is about systems designed to be irrational. Both Agastya Sen and Yossarian are caught in endless bureaucratic loops. In Catch-22, war has become a game of survival through absurd logic. In Mammaries, governance is war by other means—confusing, demoralising, and endless. Both books portray institutional insanity. The difference is cultural: Heller’s madness is mechanised and Western; Chatterjee’s is sprawling and subcontinental, layered with caste, corruption, nepotism, and fake secularism.
4. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry): While Mistry’s novel is realist and deeply empathetic, Mammaries is ironic and scathing. But both are, at their core, postcolonial novels about state failure. In A Fine Balance, individuals are crushed under the wheels of political change. In Mammaries, individuals become the wheels—complicit in their own degradation, bureaucrats of their own despair. Mistry’s India is filled with characters trying to preserve dignity. Chatterjee’s India is peopled by characters who have stopped pretending to care. The tragedy in Mistry is human; in Chatterjee, it is institutional.
5. The Mammaries of the Welfare State vs White Teeth (Zadie Smith): Zadie Smith’s novel is more multicultural, concerned with identity and migration. But it shares with Mammaries a sharp postcolonial tongue. Both authors examine the absurdity of national narratives: Smith in the UK, Chatterjee in India. What unites them is their use of satire to expose the limits of post-imperial liberalism. But while Smith’s characters wrestle with identity in a multicultural metropolis, Chatterjee’s are suffocating in the heat of Delhi’s civil service offices. If Smith is writing about the failures of the British Empire’s afterlife, Chatterjee is writing about the failure of India to live up to its independence.
The welfare state in Chatterjee’s vision is not a mechanism of care—it’s an exhausted cow, milked to death by corrupt politicians, overpaid officials, and NGOs with hidden agendas. It is no longer about the redistribution of wealth but about the perpetuation of inefficiency.
The Nehruvian state is reduced to an empty shell—its files yellowing, its officers cynical, and its healthcare system a joke. Unlike earlier generations of Indian fiction that saw hope in reform, Chatterjee offers none. This is a fully post-idealistic novel. There is no Gandhian purity, no Nehruvian vision, only bureaucratic stagnation and moral rot.
Chatterjee’s India is a zombie nation: the form of a state exists, but the soul is missing. The postcolonial promise has decayed into a parody of governance. Elections are held, files are filed, reports are written—but nothing changes.
Chatterjee’s use of English is surgical and excessive. He mimics bureaucratic jargon to mock it, stretching sentences until they break under the weight of their own meaninglessness. It’s a kind of linguistic terrorism—bombing the reader with detail until numbness sets in.
Reading Mammaries in 2009 felt oddly prophetic. India was halfway through the UPA era, corruption scandals were brewing, and the middle class was oscillating between apathy and outrage. The book captured that moment perfectly, as if Chatterjee had bottled the national mood a decade earlier. I remember laughing aloud in the reading room, then catching myself—because the laughter hurt.
It was the same hurt I had felt reading The Last Burden, but magnified and politicised. Where Burden made me confront familial hypocrisy, Mammaries made me question the very scaffolding of the nation-state. It didn’t just mock bureaucrats; it made me suspect that I, too, was part of the farce—one of the many suckling at the mammaries, even if just ideologically.
I didn’t return to English, August until years later. But Mammaries never left me. Its grotesque imagery—the bloated patients in collapsing hospitals, the meaningless policy meetings, the inertia disguised as governance—stayed lodged in my consciousness. It made me look at every government form, every “circular,” every Lok Sabha debate with a new lens of horror.
The Mammaries of the Welfare State is perhaps the most acerbic political novel India has produced. It is the Catch-22 of postcolonial governance, the Animal Farm of the Indian civil service, the Rag Darbari for a globalized, decaying republic. It doesn’t mourn the death of idealism—it performs its autopsy.
What makes it unforgettable is not just its satire but its moral stance: it refuses to pretend that anything will get better. It offers no redemption arc, no catharsis. Just dark, intelligent laughter in the face of national entropy.
In a world where every election promises “good governance,” Mammaries reminds us that governance itself might be the problem. And that, perhaps, is its most radical insight.
October 3, 2013
Depressingly humorous, the entire story goes on like a multitude of sequences, events, incidents in succession one after the other as in a marijuana fueled haze. Quite different from English, August particularly in terms of the non-linearity of the narrative. Somewhere someone has compared Upamanyu Chatterjee to Joseph Heller, and I would not disagree with him.
April 1, 2017
I expected this book to be as interesting as English, August. Not as engaging as the prequel but is a decent read. It took me sometime to finish this book.
January 19, 2013
In this sequel to "English, August" - which I enjoyed immensely - August is no longer the naive, optimistic, pot-smoking wannabe beaurocrat. He is no longer called August either. Agastya is older, more bitter but still resistant to change into the monster that the system called "The Welfare State" forces its employees to become. He is the good guy in a realm where being good implies being lazy and indifferent. He wishes to change the system from the inside but then he comes across the universal problem of being a speck in the ocean of the corruption and vile. With characters nuttier, strange and more real than any other in Indian fiction, Chatterjee manages to paint a true picture of the bizarre universe called the Indian society. The book was published in 2000 and some of the events and government decisions that Chatterjee envisions in the book, more for comic relief, absurdity and overdramatisation, are a reality today. I wish that this book was as popular as its prequel.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
October 6, 2012
A good sequel to english august
August 25, 2019
Hopelessly puerile. Specially after the brilliance of English August.
February 12, 2021
One of the rare books that I abandon, The mammaries of the welfare state lacked the core ingredient of what made its predecessor great. Augustya Sen has aged a decade or so and is now well versed to the intricacies of the welfare state. But the narrative lacks the central theme and depth of English, August. The earlier story was about August's search for meaning. It was honest, soulful and relatable - even today. It's follow up lacks of all that. It seems to be just a frustrated rant about the corrupt, bureaucratic workings of India. This gets old after a few hundred pages. The unending list of government positions, departments, schemes and titles is meant to overwhelm, but it does so without wit and charm. The new characters are not likeable enough to stick with them through their journey. They seem to be shallow caricatures, drawn in great detail but without any layers.
After forcing myself about a 3rd of the way through I decided I wasn't enjoying the journey and there wasn't any point in pushing myself to the finish line.
After forcing myself about a 3rd of the way through I decided I wasn't enjoying the journey and there wasn't any point in pushing myself to the finish line.
May 27, 2014
After an amazingly well written "English August", this one is disappointing. This book yet again demonstrates author's command over the English language as well as the Hindi slang that has been used profusely right through the narration. However, this narration becomes monotonous and, on occasions repetitive and boring. The author exaggerates time and again (perhaps based on his personal experiences)to "drive" home the humour. No one has been spared in the book that takes a dig primarily at the bureaucracy (almost everyone does these days) and the "state" of affairs. There are indeed fascinating references to the politicians as well, including their sartorial details :"Our politicians wear khadi. The Prime Minister wears it. The clip of his Cartier gold fountain pen looks splendid against it". Upamanyu has a unique sense of humour that served him well in the first offering. However, he carries it a bit too far in this one.
April 13, 2010
Amazingly brilliant and humorous. Upmanyu Chatterjee is the Joseph Heller of India. Sometimes it can look tedious and took me a long time to read but it's totally worth the time and effort.
The book begins 8 years after English, August and elaborates in much details the workings of the welfare state. Chatterjee is a cynic par excellence and the proximity of his prose to reality terrifying.
The book begins 8 years after English, August and elaborates in much details the workings of the welfare state. Chatterjee is a cynic par excellence and the proximity of his prose to reality terrifying.
January 29, 2019
Agastya and Madna, always has its own flavour. But, unlike the book “English, August”, “The Mammarries of the welfare state”, is different. Though, not as different like chalk and cheese. It is supposed to be a sequel, but might crush expectations, if any, of the former’s distinct vibe.
The story line is not uniform. But each snippet, weaved together by a certain predilection, is dank, and perhaps more brutal. UC’s predilection, well.., the obvious, book-long harangues directed at the state of affair and all that. Yet still, the lyrical-satire, the narration i.e.., though demanding at times, nevertheless, is always a path to my delectation. ;D
A tad-bit awareness of Indian Politics- the state of affairs, starting somewhere around the last quarter of the previous century, I think, will add flavour to the read.
All in all, savage!
The story line is not uniform. But each snippet, weaved together by a certain predilection, is dank, and perhaps more brutal. UC’s predilection, well.., the obvious, book-long harangues directed at the state of affair and all that. Yet still, the lyrical-satire, the narration i.e.., though demanding at times, nevertheless, is always a path to my delectation. ;D
A tad-bit awareness of Indian Politics- the state of affairs, starting somewhere around the last quarter of the previous century, I think, will add flavour to the read.
All in all, savage!
October 12, 2025
At the start of the book one heaves a sigh - it is terrible nonsense, a self indulgent rant. The jokes are stale, the sex forced and ridiculous. I remembered loving English August but this read like a bore of a book. Absolutely soulless sanctimonious tripe. One settles in after that, as does the writing and it does get better and then it gets absolutely brilliant. The ability to distill the horror of the Indian state - India itself - into something one lives with and navigates, I haven’t read anything which does this as effectively and as well. Was reminded of David Foster Wallace. Brutal. We slump again towards the end and the takes make you squirm - so uncomfortably close to your younger life, and friends and so terribly superior. Overall though it was a great read - funny, satirical and razor sharp. I just wish it was kinder.
October 1, 2020
The book is not a predictable sequel to English, August. August is in fact more Agastya and prefers Hinglish (which he refers to as the language of tomorrow) over English. He is also fluent in officialese, which he generously uses to communicate the absolute nothingness of his inert official life. He is also well-settled into the steel frame of the Welfare State despite his Englishness. The prose is irreverent, funny, witty and smart. It is replete with eloquent rants, which sometimes get a bit too indulgent. It is an interesting read but lacks the vigour of English August.
September 8, 2019
I haven't read "English, August" yet but perhaps I should have.
"The Mammaries of the Welfare State" (2000) doesn't seem to have the wit and narrative flow of Upamanyu Charterjee's most celebrated work. The sequel (parts of which I found quite tedious) continues its satirical exploration of Indian bureaucracy, partly from the point of view of Agastya Sen - the protagonist of the 1988 novel that is very much on my to-read list.
"The Mammaries of the Welfare State" (2000) doesn't seem to have the wit and narrative flow of Upamanyu Charterjee's most celebrated work. The sequel (parts of which I found quite tedious) continues its satirical exploration of Indian bureaucracy, partly from the point of view of Agastya Sen - the protagonist of the 1988 novel that is very much on my to-read list.
November 19, 2022
Totally wasteful. Is the author trying to narrate for some international (non-Indian) readers who are interested in India (I mean a welfare state) of this type.
Good effort but totally misleading. And further as book it is all messed up. Portrayal of characters is very poor, so is story. I went up to last page to find out if I can get at least one paragraph which can be consedered as "Well Written" by my standards.
I wonder if "English August" was his work.
Good effort but totally misleading. And further as book it is all messed up. Portrayal of characters is very poor, so is story. I went up to last page to find out if I can get at least one paragraph which can be consedered as "Well Written" by my standards.
I wonder if "English August" was his work.
August 4, 2019
Its a difficult read. Its hilarious but really a difficult read. I wish it was a bit more cohesive and wish the end would have been linear .
December 30, 2021
Reminds me of Gary Shteyngart, but perhaps a few too many notes for my taste.
September 3, 2022
Just started this sequel book within month after completing English, August. But this is not at par level of English, August. ☹️
December 31, 2022
actually really funny, not as funny as its prequel though. i may have enjoyed it a little more if i read it as a standalone book
November 9, 2024
Its a very Kafkasque book for sure - I didn't enjoy reading it..completed it for the sake of completing it.
March 12, 2025
A joke book, that’s how the author too describes it.
June 8, 2021
It is everything that the blurb says: Comic, Kafkaesque, and a masterwork of satire. What it is not is a sequel of any kind. I find both the main character as well as the writing style completely different, and not as captivating as its brilliant predecessor.
October 27, 2011
The best book written about the indian condition by an indian, undoubtedly. It will get you disgusted, it will churn your stomach, it will stun you into silence. Certainly not for the faint hearted or ones with a weak stomach.
Ah well, just read below
http://theevilp.blogspot.com/2009/06/...
http://theevilp.blogspot.com/2008/07/...
Wrote a short story in attempted tribute to Upamanyu Chatterjee and this book (have barely written 2-3 short stories in my life)
http://noputhyfooting.wordpress.com/2...
And just thinking about him
http://noputhyfooting.wordpress.com/2...
Ah well, just read below
http://theevilp.blogspot.com/2009/06/...
http://theevilp.blogspot.com/2008/07/...
Wrote a short story in attempted tribute to Upamanyu Chatterjee and this book (have barely written 2-3 short stories in my life)
http://noputhyfooting.wordpress.com/2...
And just thinking about him
http://noputhyfooting.wordpress.com/2...
March 17, 2015
Twice I re-started reading this book, but would always get stuck around 140-170 page range. The levity that put the pre-quel on another pedestal is completely lost in this sequel. I am aware that the writing was mocking the Indian bureaucracy by mirroring its love for vacuous and long winded sentences, but this very thing, ironically put me off from further reading. The book turned me away, just the way the bureaucracy turns people away with its fibbings and fobbings and long winded vaguery.
Don't get me wrong. I am Upamanyu's fan.
Don't get me wrong. I am Upamanyu's fan.
October 1, 2012
Well, at times the style of writing just gets on you, and at other times it appears quite funny. The book gives an insight into the working of the 'system'. A must read for anyone who intends to join the Indian bearacracy, this book, I would say is still not better than its English, August which was funnier, more out of the box and more random.
April 21, 2016
Imagine a Book like English August, but with all elements that made the original a fun read stripped out. That is what this book really is, a bad hangover without the alcohol. The author keeps ranting with inside references which most of the time will not make any connection to the reader. Better avoided.
February 25, 2017
Individual chapters could be interesting/funny, but the book as a whole seemed disjointed and somewhat incoherent. The book's sense of humor also began funny, but rapidly become stale and repetitive.
February 3, 2010
The novel is an attack on the imperfect beaurocraticy of India . The politicians as well as the govt officers plundering the state. This shocking novel is realistic in the sense that ordinary people might have experienced more than we can ever imagine.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews