The Last Jet-Engine Laugh - Hardcover

Joshi, Ruchir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002570890 ISBN 13: 9780002570893

Publisher: Flamingo, 2001

Synopsis

The most interesting, most strikingly fresh Indian novel since Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.

This is a debut novel from India of an utterly original kind. Joshi has found a style and a form in which to say new things about the Indian experience in a new manner. Like Roy, Joshi is doing something entirely fresh.

The novel takes three generations of a Gujarati family and uses them to track the course of Indian history back to 1930 and forward into the first decades of the next century. The grandparents are disciples of Gandhi, smart, sarcastic and principled; they meet on a non-violent demonstration against British rule in Calcutta in the 1930s, fall in love while falling under the army’s baton. Their only son, Paresh, our principal narrator, grows up to drift through life, torn in different directions all at once. In turn, he produces a daughter, Para, who is tomboyish, aggressive, martial, and, in her sequences in the book, a squadron leader in the Indian Air Force when, in the near future, India is at war with a Muslim Pakistani-Iranian alliance. She therefore kills people for a living and is the antithesis of her grandparents’ principles of Gandhiesque non-violence, civil disobedience and passive resistance. This trajectory of Indian history from non-violence to belligerent jingoism is reflected in key episodes in the lives of this family. All four key characters are fascinating, and each of the setpieces in which they figure is stunningly handled by Joshi. The writing is sharp, modern, fluent and varied. It feels authentic, considered and moving at all times. It’s a winner.

About this title

About the Author

ruchir joshi is a trained and practising filmmaker in India. Born and raised in Calcutta, he now lives in Delhi. This is his first book.

From the Back Cover

It is the not-so-distant future, and in the belligerent wannabe superpower that is India, Para, a tomboyish fighter pilot, flies sorties against the Pak-Saudi alliance. She has been trained to kill, to be a deadly instrument for the military ambitions of the ultra-modern, ultra-competitive state. And yet it is less than a hundred years since her smart sarcastic, principled grandparents met on a non-violent demonstration against British rule in Ahmedabad, falling in love as they were trampled by mounted police. Their only son Paresh, grows up to drift through life, torn in different directions all at once, though he does produce an entirely spirited, directed daughter – Para.

How did India get Para from her grandparents? And what happened to the generation in between, of Paresh and his peers? Moving between crowd scenes and midair battles, between sexual farce and social embarrassment, Joshi maps the arcs made by these four striking characters, by the family they make up, and by their country, across a complex and confused century.

Joshi's writing is sharp, loose, fluent and varied. 'The Last Jet-Engine Laugh' is a novel that is jaded and yet principled, ribald and yet serious, vigorous yet sensitive. It feels authentic, considered and moving at all times. It marks the arrival of a writer whose prose is fresh, as surprising and as distinctly original as any to come out of India in the last two decades.

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002570890
• ISBN 13: 9780002570893
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400