Baumgartner's Bombay - Softcover

Desai, Anita

3.51

943 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140131760 ISBN 13: 9780140131765

Publisher: Penguin, 1990

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Matteo and Sophie join the 1970s flight of young Europeans to India. Matteo - Italian, raised in the luscious countryside around Lake Como, restless since childhood - has been introduced by a tutor to Hermann Hesse's The Journey to the East, and it opens in him a desperate longing. Sophie - German, practical, worldly - is willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. In India, together they visit swamis, gurus, ashrams - always searching. Matteo is seeking spiritual enlightenment, but for Sophie fulfillment lies in earthly love. And when they meet a holy woman known as the Mother, the differences between them seem to explode. When we learn the Mother's story, we see it as an earlier version of their own - the story of a young girl growing up in Cairo and finding her way East by joining a troupe of Indian dancers she has met in Europe. Her journey, a young woman's daring progress through Paris and Venice and New York, until she finds her moment of transcendence in India, comments on, and gives added breadth to, the young couple's quest.

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Review:

"A daring, colorful novel... Desai is a superb observer of the human race" (New York Times)

"One of the best English novelists writing in English" (Independent)

"Hugo Baumgartner, the central character of Anita Desai's dazzling novel, is a wandering Jew all his life. From the agonising scenes of his childhood in pre-war Berlin, through his spell in business in Calcutta and then Bombay, he simply does not belong. Too dark for Hitler's society, he is too fair for India; he remains a firanghi, a foreigner, whatever he goes" (Daily Telegraph)

"Beautifully observed... Recovers a lost slice of history in its portrayal of a wounded survivor" (Observer)

"Cleverly constructed, and full of sharp perceptions about human nature under the skin, whatever the colour" (The Times)

Book Description:

'A daring and colourful novel. A superb observer of the human race' New York Times Book Review

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