The Impressionist

Acclaimed debut novel reissued to mark the release of Hari Kunzru's unmissable new novel White Tears

A sweeping, colourful adventure from the acclaimed author of White Tears 
 
Discover Hari Kunzru's smash-hit debut novel 
 
This is the extraordinary story of a child conceived in a wild monsoon night, a boy destined to be an outsider, a man with many names and no name. 
 
Born into luxury but disinherited and cast out onto the streets of Agra, Pran Nath must become a chameleon. Chasing his fortune, he will travel from the red light district of Bombay to the green lawns of England to the unmapped African wilderness. He will play many different roles -- a young prize in a brothel, the adopted son of Scottish missionaries, the impeccably educated young Englishman headed for Oxford -- in order to find the role that will finally fit. 
 
Daring and riotously inventive, The Impressionist is an odyssey of self-discovery: a tale of the many lives one man can live and of the universal search for true identity.

Publisher's description. Discover an odyssey of self-discovery, as one child born different must find his way and his place in the world.  From the streets of Agra to Bombay's red light district, from the pristine, cloistered lawns of Oxford to an expedition in West Africa - Pran Nath is a boy who will have many faces, many names, many lives...

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men, and the story collection Noise. He lives in New York and his next novel, White Tears, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in spring 2017.

This is the extraordinary story of a child conceived in a wild monsoon night, a boy destined to be an outsider, a man with many names and no name. 
 
Born into luxury but disinherited and cast out onto the streets of Agra, Pran Nath must become a chameleon. Chasing his fortune, he will travel from the red light district of Bombay to the green lawns of England to the unmapped African wilderness. He will play many different roles -- a young prize in a brothel, the adopted son of Scottish missionaries, the impeccably educated young Englishman headed for Oxford -- in order to find the role that will finally fit. 
 
Daring and riotously inventive, The Impressionist is an odyssey of self-discovery: a tale of the many lives one man can live and of the universal search for true identity.

Gods Without Men

Gods Without Men is Hari Kunzru's epic novel of intertwined lives and a vast expanse of American desert. 
 
In the Californian desert . . . 
 
A four-year-old boy goes missing. 
A British rock star goes quietly mad. 
An alien-worshipping cult is born. 
An Iraqi teenager takes part in a war game. 
 
In a remote town, near a rock formation known as The Pinnacles, lives intertwine, stories echo, and the universal search for meaning and connection continues. 
 
 
'Kunzru's great American novel' Independent 
 
'Readers speak of it in hushed tones as conveying the secrets of the universe' Newsday 
 
'Extraordinary, smart, innovative, a revelation. Has the counterculture feel of a late-1960s US campus hit - something by Vonnegut or Pynchon or Wolfe. Genuinely interesting and exhilarating. Extremely enjoyable' Guardian 
 
'Astonishing, mind-blowing. One of the most original novels I've read in years' Counterpunch 
 
'One of the most socially observant and skilful novelists around. Consistently gripping and entertaining' Literary Review 
 
'A great sprawling narrative, as vast as the canvas on which it is written' Washington Post 
 
'Reverberates long after you finish reading it' New Yorker 
 
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men, and the story collection Noise. He lives in New York.

Extraordinary . . . smart and innovative . . . Kunzru is conspicuously clever and talented . . . a revelation . . . interesting and exhilarating . . . a virtuoso performance . . . funny and ingenious . . . This clever and extremely enjoyable novel deserves to be popular not just with hippies, students and other questing types, but also with more sceptical audiences

The literary skills of Hari Kunzru are evident throughout this complex and disturbing novel . . . beautifully constructed sentences . . . A brilliant crossover literary feat . . . Careful readers will find Kunzru himself is something of a trickster

Consistently atmospheric . . . Richly detailed . . . For all the wit, this is a dark portrait of modern morals . . . Kunzru tenderly teases out the humanity, to powerful emotional effect

Psychological acuity, a wonderful linguistic precision and the ability to make beautiful accordance between form and content via thoughtful narrative experiment. Gods without Men is a step further along the road towards the full realisation of Kunzru's early promise. It makes undeniable the claim that he is one of our most important novelists . . . As large and cruel and real as life . . . Never less than entertaining

With each novel, Hari Kunzru is proving himself a subtler and more ingenious writer . . . his most ambitious work yet

Gods Without Men is a dazed, erudite and unforgettable novel

Kunzru's gift for satire remains undimmed . . . Kunzru has already established himself as one of the most socially observant and skilful novelists around. In Gods Without Men, he has raised his game still further, creating a mature, intricately balanced fiction that is consistently gripping and entertaining

A funny, beautifully observed novel that raises big questions about how far events and people, past and present, are connected. But for all the big ideas, it is also surprisingly moving

Dizzying scope . . . It is a testament to Kunzru's ability as a writer that Gods Without Men presents so many characters sketched so vividly

Kunzru's gift for the plain craft of prose, [and the wilful idiosyncrasy that] has shaped this sprawling, multi-stranded novel

Involving, thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining

Hugely entertaining . . . A warm and well-travelled intelligence . . . Heartwarming

His biggest, most ambitious and most engaging novel to date

Psychological acuity, a wonderful linguistic precision and the ability to make beautiful accordance between form and content via thoughtful narrative experiment. Gods without Men is a step further along the road towards the full realisation of Kunzru's early promise. It makes undeniable the claim that he is one of our most important novelists . . . As large and cruel and real as life

Ambitiously eclectic . . . smartly sharp social detail, high-fidelity dialogue, vivid evocation of place . . . ironic wit and exuberant guyings of paranormal gobbledegook

Fuelled by an energetic intelligence. Along with a love of big ideas came narrative zest, verbal and comic flair, and an acute eye for contemporary mores both East and West . . . Gods with Men marks another new and bold departure . . . This really is Kunru's great American novel . . . Compulsively readable, skilfully orchestrated, Kunzru's American odyssey brings a new note into his underlying preoccupation with human identity'

Being able to create a vivid sense of place is one of the hallmarks of a quality literary writer, but few could have done so as brilliantly as Hari Kunzru in his latest novel Gods without Men

Intensely involving . . . Gods Without Men is one of the best novels of the year

In the Californian desert a small, autistic child goes missing. A British rock star goes quietly mad. An alien-worshipping cult is born. An Iraqi teenager takes part in a war game. 
 
In an odd, remote town, near a rock formation known as The Pinnacles, lives and experiences intertwine, stories entangle and echo, and the search for meaning, pattern and connection in a dying universe continues. 
 
'Compulsively readable, skilfully orchestrated . . . this really is Kunzru's great American novel' Independent

My Revolutions

Love, idealism and revolution: what will happen when one man's radical youth explodes into his carefully constructed family life?

It&rsquo;s the day before Mike Frame&rsquo;s fiftieth birthday and his quiet provincial life is suddenly falling apart. But perhaps it doesn&rsquo;t matter, because it&rsquo;s not his life in the first place. He has a past that his partner Miranda and step-daughter Sam know nothing about, lived under another name amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary armed struggle of the 1970s. 
 
Now Mike is seeing ghosts &ndash; a dead ex-lover and an old friend who wants to reminisce. Mike can no longer ignore the contradiction between who he is and who he once was. Which side was he on back then? And which side is he on now?

Transmission

The brilliant new novel from Hari Kunzru, one of Granta's 20 Best of Young British Novelists, 2003.

Hari Kunzru's Transmission is a witty novel about cyberspace, a Bollywood dancer and a world where everyone is connected. 
 
It's the twenty-first century, and everything and everyone is connected. 
 
Meet Arjun Mehta, an Indian cybergeek catapulted into California's spiralling hi-tech sector; Leela Zahir, beguiling Bollywood actress filming in the midge-infested Scottish wilds; and Guy Swift, hyped-up marketing exec lost in a blue-sky tomorrow of his own devising. Three dislocated individuals seeking nodes of connectivity - a place to fit in. Yet this is the twenty-first century, and their lives are about to become unexpectedly entangled as a virus spreads, and all their futures are rewired. But will it take them further from their dreams, or closer to their hearts? 
 
'An aphoristic joke, a neat turn of phrase; a joke that makes you laugh . . . there's nothing Kunzru couldn't manage in prose. Thoroughly engrossing' Literary Review 
 
'Funny, heartfelt and beautifully written, confirms Kunzru as one of the most talented writers of his generation' Image 
 
'Very enjoyable, I couldn't put it down. Funny and wry; it is deftly plotted; its characters intimately drawn. Blissful' Observer 
 
'Utterly affecting, a novel with devastating satirical bite' Financial Times 
 
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men, and the story collection Noise. He lives in New York.

There's a message in your inbox. Then, a few moments later, your computer crashes. 
 
Leela Zahir, Bollywood actress and temperamental star, is being catapulted from the fringes of fame into a million inboxes. Arjun Mehta, computer geek, looks up from his screen to find that he does, after all, have a role to play in the world. Guy Swift, marketing executive with his own agency, a beautiful girlfriend and a handle on modern life, is losing his grip. In this age of instant worldwide communication, anything can happen and anything will... 
 
Hari Kunzru's new novel is a heady mix of London, Bollywood and Silicon Valley. Taking in three continents and following the lives of Guy, Arjun and Leela as they make their way in the real world, Transmission is a brilliant and funny take on life at the click of a mouse.

Hari Kunzru

White Tears is a book that everyone should be reading right now

[A] stunning, audacious, urgent thriller, as challenging as it is terrifying, as brave as it is brutal... It will shock you, horrify you, unsettle you, and that's exactly the point. It lets nothing and nobody off the hook

Delilloesque -- moody, threatening, and profoundly dark... A story about ghosts, about grievances leaking through the fabric of decades, and about retribution, violence and hatred. At every turn, Kunzru's words concoct a dreamlike world where the past isn't dead and the boundaries of reality flicker at the margins.

Haunting, doom-drenched, genuinely and viscerally disturbing... Kunzru showcases his trademark exhilarating prose throughout - closing with a conclusion that packs a real punch

Like Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch... A stunning novel of ideas that becomes a page-turning thriller... During Trump's presidency, reading White Tears feels like a necessary and exhilarating act

A disorientating odyssey through decades of American history...Kunzru has always been an assured and intellectually gifted novelist, but I am not sure he has ever before displaying such emotional heft

Visceral horror, pacey storytelling and razor tautness. White Tears is a state-of-the-nation novel that ties pre-Civil Rights barbarism with a contemporary amnesia that parades as post racial America

Exquisite... captures a yearning achieved fleetingly in life and more fully in art

At its heart is a serious reminder of how too often history robs the powerless of their voices

Think of it as a socially-aware Goosebumps book for grown-ups

What begins as dude-bro send-up soon spirals into a supernatural revenge fantasy keyed to America's history of racism

A captivating satire about race and music

Both like a radical revenge fantasia and a stern lesson in radical empathy

Kunzru's awareness and discernment have particular value in an America of the moment where nothing less than the country's meaning is at stake... unmoored between the heart that's felt it and the tip of the tongue that awaits the heart's transmission, in search of a promise that's determined to keep itself

A witty, strange and often very moving book

Deep themes on the nature of memory, race and authenticity

[An] excellent ghost story... A mesmerising tale of white guilt and black oppression in America

A nightmarish page-turner... A disorientating odyssey through American history and a lesson in what happens when art is hijacked for less than noble aims

This rich novel embraces the Deep South, a murder and a wealthy family's dark secret, while riffing on art and authenticity

Full of verve and rhythm, White Tears cleverly skewers ideas about angst surrounding white appropriation of black music

A fast-paced, ambitious, hallucinatory mystery

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

Best friends Carter and Seth have just one thing in common: music. After college they move to New York and begin selling old jazz and blues records to the new generation of music fans, ripping off black culture to line white pockets. Until one day they walk into trouble - a lost song resurfaces which contains the power to ruin them both. First Carter then Seth is sucked into a vortex of violence and vengeance, as forces they don't understand conspire to teach these white boys a lesson. 
 
This is a nail-biting ride through the terrifying ghosts of America's past. It's about cultural appropriation, black lives and white privilege. And it is about the music that runs through the country's veins like blood.

Hari Kunzru

Praise for White Tears

White Tears is a book that everyone should be reading right now

[A] stunning, audacious, urgent thriller, as challenging as it is terrifying, as brave as it is brutal... It will shock you, horrify you, unsettle you, and that's exactly the point. It lets nothing and nobody off th ...

Delilloesque -- moody, threatening, and profoundly dark... A story about ghosts, about grievances leaking through the fabric of decades, and about retribution, violence and hatred. At every turn, Kunzru's words conc ...

White Tears is a book that everyone should be reading right now

[A] stunning, audacious, urgent thriller, as challenging as it is terrifying, as brave as it is brutal... It will shock you, horrify you, unsettle you, and that's exactly the point. It lets nothing and nobody off th ...

Delilloesque -- moody, threatening, and profoundly dark... A story about ghosts, about grievances leaking through the fabric of decades, and about retribution, violence and hatred. At every turn, Kunzru's words conc ...

White Tears is a book that everyone should be reading right now

[A] stunning, audacious, urgent thriller, as challenging as it is terrifying, as brave as it is brutal... It will shock you, horrify you, unsettle you, and that's exactly the point. It lets nothing and nobody off th ...

Delilloesque -- moody, threatening, and profoundly dark... A story about ghosts, about grievances leaking through the fabric of decades, and about retribution, violence and hatred. At every turn, Kunzru's words conc ...

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