The Romantics

The Romantics looks to Flaubert's Sentimental Education, to E.M. Forster, to Turgenev. But it is the product of a distinctive and sharp intelligence

A sensitive and introspective novel . . . a meditation on hope and failure. Mishra's evocations of Indian landscape and customs are vivid and thoughtful; his prose clean and unhampered and his descriptive passages to be savoured

Contemporary India is brought to vigorous, thrumming life in the pages of The Romantics

If you buy one literary novel this year, make sure it's this

[A]n intriguing combination of casual grace and emotional intensity, peppered with discreet social comment on caste, class, sectarian strife, the state of the nation . . . a charming debut

A work of art, a first novel of the highest achievement...a writer whose work will last. Read it and find yourself at the source of something great

[An] extraordinary debut novel . . . a supernova

Mishra's lyrical descriptions . . . and the depth of culture the region offers, is a haunting reminder of India's power to bewitch

Grip[s] the reader as artfully and as compellingly as the first page of A Passage to India

If much of cosmopolitan Indian writing has valorized the immigrant and the foreign land, then The Romantics is a celebration of the home and its forgotten world

A voice that fuses the lapidary precision of Flaubert with the meditative lyricism of Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, a voice that's alternately wry and ruminative, meticulous and expansive

Pankaj Mishra writes the most perfect prose of any Indian novelist of his generation

Mishra's eye is sharp, his prose flawless

[A] surprisingly assured, provocatively balanced meditation on the familiar culture flash

A truly ambitious attempt to compare the way people in the East and the West dream . . . Delicate and subtly tantalising in the way only a book can really be

It is almost as if when everyone is flashing De Beers diamonds, Mishra traps the quiet luminescence of the moonstone in his theme and style

Mishra's writing has a lovely potency . . . subtly layered and compelling

Impressive . . . The Romantics turns its back on the exotic richness and the "teeming" panoramic quality which we readily assume to be expressive of Indianness itself

A first novel whose achievement is something that most writers could be proud of at any stage in their careers

Pankaj Mishra's books include The Romantics, which won the LA Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for fiction, Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire. He contributes political and literary essays to the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
'If you buy one literary novel this year, make sure it's this' THE TIMES 
'The Romantics looks to Flaubert's Sentimental Education, to E.M. Forster, to Turgenev. But it is the product of a distinctive and sharp intelligence' HILARY MANTEL 
'Grips the reader as artfully and as compellingly as the first page of A Passage to India' THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS 
 
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION 
 
1989. In the holy city of Varanasi, 19-year-old Samar rents a room to avoid a small-town job and lose himself in reading about worlds outside of India. But when he is thrust into local a circle of privileged European and American expats, led by the charismatic Miss West, Samar will soon face his own silent desires and crumbling beliefs. 
 
'A work of art' Financial Times 
'A supernova' The Washington Post 
'A charming debut' The Independent

Pankaj Mishra

FROM THE AWARD WINNING AUTHOR OF AGE OF ANGER COMES A GATSBY-ESQUE TALE OF WEALTH AND AMBITION 
 
'A book that demands to be read' MOHSIN HAMID 
 
'Terrific . . . deeply satisfying to read' KAMILA SHAMSIE 
 
Arun and his two classmates, Aseem and Virendra, are the success stories of their generation. As graduates of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, they have smashed social barriers and played-out Gatsby-style fantasies across the globe. 
 
Run and Hide is a lyrical and piercing story of morality, materialism and upheaval in an every-changing world. 
 
'Sharp, provocative and engaging . . . Run and Hide might be the most zeitgeisty novel you could read' SPECTATOR 
 
'One of the finest, bravest writers we have' JUNOT DIAZ 
 
'It'll entertain the hell out of you' MOHAMMED HANIF 
 
'A novel of loss and moral collapse worthy of Henry James' JOSHUA FERRIS

Pankaj Mishra

Run And Hide

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