Word: chaudhuri
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...title of Amit Chaudhuri's latest novel, A New World, is somewhat misleading. The book seems to explore the difficulty in translating a traditional Indian upbringing to a modern Western life. However, A New World does not substantively explore Indian emigrant Jayojit Chatterjee's struggle to conquer life in his new world, the world of an American academic in the Midwest. Instead, the novel is a celebration of the old world Jayojit has left behind. A New World traces Jayojit's longings for the old world of his parents' home in Calcutta, longings that seem to surprise even Jayojit himself...
...Chaudhuri focuses much of his novel on Jayojit's observations of the seemingly mundane details of life in Calcutta. Jayojit dutifully recounts the shifts in the dollar-rupee ratio and vividly describes the different saris worn by all the women he sees. He is as entranced by the noise of car horns on the street as he is by the religious rituals of his parents' neighbors. These snippets of life in India that Chaudhuri gives us through his account of Jayojit's wanderings are sometimes moving, sometimes simply mundane. But these observations in fact provide the key to Jayojit...
Marriage is the recurring theme of the novel, weaving together Jayojit's thoughts about India and his interactions with his parents and son. Jayojit's marriage to Bonny's mother was arranged by their parents, but their subsequent divorce is an anomaly in their parents' society. Chaudhuri juxtaposes flashbacks of Jayojit's marriage to the interaction of Jayojit's parents. Neither couple seems to be in love; but Jayojit's parents, with their traditional mindset, would never think of changing their relationship...
DIED. NIRAD CHAUDHURI, 101, Indian-born author critical of the New India promoted by Gandhi and Nehru; in Oxford, England. The Autobiography of the Unknown Indian (1951) cemented his reputation as an astute chronicler of the knotty relationship between England and India. Born into the Bengal Hindu aristocracy, he rued the decline of the Bengal Renaissance, a movement he hoped would establish India as the Western country of his dreams...
...While Chaudhuri's lyrical, descriptive passages are a refreshing change from the ready-made, movie script-like popular fiction of Elmore Leonard or Sidney Sheldon, he overstays his welcome by dragging out this style for over 400 pages. The reader becomes bewildered by the barrage of foreign names of the characters, especially in the last story where relationships amongst them are never clearly explicated. Even more puzzling is the reason for stringing the three novels in one giant volume in the first place. No solid connection among the stories is ever made, despite the obvious presence of an Indian protagonist...