Romantics

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



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

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 ― Guardian

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

If you buy one literary novel this year, make sure it's this -- Amanda Craig ― The Times

This bright new star is the real thing -- David Robson ― Sunday Telegraph

[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 ― The Independent

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 -- Candia McWilliam ― Financial Times

A first novel of astonishing maturity ― Daily Telegraph

[An] extraordinary debut novel . . . a supernova ― The Washington Post

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

Grip[s] the reader as artfully and as compellingly as the first page of A Passage to India ― The New York Review of Books

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 -- Amitava Kumar ― The Nation

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 -- Michiko Kakutani ― New York Times

Many treasures in this brilliant novel -- Elizabeth Hardwick

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

Mishra's eye is sharp, his prose flawless ― Time

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

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 ― Vogue

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 ― The Hindu

Mishra's writing has a lovely potency . . . subtly layered and compelling ― Times Literary Supplement

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 ― Sydney Morning Herald

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