Jerry Pinto

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Em and the Big Hoom

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

A rare, brilliant book, one that is wonderfully different from any other that I have read coming out of India

I can't remember the last time I wanted to read a book so much . . . Genius

Powerful . . . flashes of telling detail

A profoundly moving book: I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this

Pinto's narrative is both brutal and beautiful

Deeply engrossing, finely-tuned, and told with a moving and luminous clarity, this is a splendid and memorable debut

A small and beautiful book . . . Pinto's writing has startling sweetness

Em and the Big Hoom is a joyous read that leaves you chuckling and sad, at once

Meet Imelda and Augustine, or - as our young narrator calls his unusual parents - Em and the Big Hoom. Most of the time, Em smokes endless beedis and sings her way through life. She is the sun around which everyone else orbits. But as enchanting and high-spirited as she can be, when Em's bipolar disorder seizes her she becomes monstrous, sometimes with calamitous consequences for herself and others. 
 
Touching, charming and funny and beautifully written, Jerry Pinto's Em and the Big Hoom will stay with readers long after the last page.

Brilliantly comic and almost unbearably moving, Jerry Pinto's Em and the Big Hoom is one of the most powerful and original fiction debuts of recent years. 
 
'Profoundly moving. I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this' Amitav Ghosh 
 
'Hilarious, reckless, brilliant' Kiran Desai 
 
In a tiny flat in Bombay Imelda Mendes - Em to her family - is by turns flamboyant, maniacally affectionate and cruelly candid. Her husband - Augustine, the 'Big Hoom' - and two children must endure her 'microweathers': swings from searing joy to brooding malevolence. 
 
And here is the story of how this family of four came to be. Of how Imelda was courted by Augustine - 'Hello, Buttercup' - and of how with the passage of time and the arrival of her children she slowly turned into Em, loving and loathing a world terrified of her extravagant excesses . . . 
 
'A near-perfect account of a psychologically troubled mother. Touching and funny' Irish Times 
 
'Delightful. Pinto is quite a genius with dialogue' Guardian 
 
Jerry Pinto has been a mathematics tutor, school librarian and journalist and is now associated with MelJol, an NGO that works in the sphere of child rights. He has edited several anthologies including, most recently, an anthology on his native city, Mumbai.

Jerry Pinto lives and works in Mumbai. He has been a mathematics tutor, school librarian, journalist and columnist. He is now associated with MelJol, an NGO that works in the sphere of child rights. His published works include a book of poems, Asylum, and Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, which won the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema in 2007. Em and the Big Hoom is his first novel.

Em and the Big Hoom

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A rare, brilliant book, one that is wonderfully different from any other that I have read coming out of India

I can't remember the last time I wanted to read a book so much . . . Genius

Powerful . . . flashes of telling detail

A profoundly moving book: I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this

Pinto's narrative is both brutal and beautiful

Deeply engrossing, finely-tuned, and told with a moving and luminous clarity, this is a splendid and memorable debut

A small and beautiful book . . . Pinto's writing has startling sweetness

Em and the Big Hoom is a joyous read that leaves you chuckling and sad, at once

About Jerry Pinto

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