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

Review:

Ruchir Joshi's debut The Last Jet-Engine Laugh is buoyed by the belief that everything matters, that every ephemeral peak, deepening drop, every drive, every breakfast, every touch, sound and word slowly forming, extends to the heart of some fundamental genetic momentum.

Paresh is the glue of the story, son of two former non-violent revolutionaries who met on a demonstration in Ahmedabad. Detached from the urgency that fuelled his parents' convictions, he adopts a passive stance toward the events of his life, becomes an observer. His daughter, Para, in turn exposed to Paresh's haphazard experience, his lack of urgency, takes firm root in combat flying. Reaction and adaptation, circumstance and principle: through the characters' instalment in the present--1970-2000-2030--and through the evolution of one family, the future of India and Indians is skilfully conjured. In a matter of decades, India has become a militaristic power from its ascetic, caste-structured past and Para, only one generation removed from Thoreauvian pacifists, has become a war hero. The wonder of Joshi's narrative is not the fantastic leaps he takes but that he makes them so convincingly.

Ruchir Joshi is relaxed and sincere, often ironic and very funny. Those readers wary of the vigorous Indian literary invasion, those tired of Salman Rushdie's apocalyptic seriousness or still angry at Tagore for The Home and the World, will find here a strong clear voice. --Michael Kedda

Review:

‘Joshi has the master’s eye for his surroundings... This is surely a great moment for the national literature of India.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Here is proof positive that it's possible for Indian writers to be wickedly cynical, funny and bitter without the scathing edge blunting the Indianness or vice versa... Put simply, The Last Jet-Engine Laugh is a family saga across three generations. But before you yawn and reach for the remote saying, "Yaar, saala, it's been done before," it ain't quite been done like this. Joshi is a most unsuitable boy, and if there were a glass palace about, he'd be the one throwing stones.' Anita Roy, Biblio Review of Books

About this edition

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