Afternoon Raag
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Book Overview
Winner of the UK's Encore Award for best second novel, a lyrical story of a Bengali student at Oxford University who is caught in the complications of a love triangle. Afternoon Raag is a book of branching and overlapping stories, a book that like memory moves unpredictably in time. In it, a nameless first-person narrator looks back at his student days in Oxford, a period of loneliness and discovery when his affections were torn between two women, and to the summer vacations that took him from England to Bombay, where his parents lived, and later to Calcutta, where he was born. Descriptions of Oxford's green lawns and drab dorms, of friends and classes and the relentless drizzle, sit beside Bombay street scenes and recollections of the teacher, now dead, from whom the narrator and his mother learned music.
Afternoon Raag is a book about the uncertainty of youth and the strange inevitability of growing up. Its images are wonderfully vivid; its rhythms elastic and entrancing. Throughout it is haunted by the spirit of the music teacher, the master singer who gives shape to the elusive and annihilating passage of time.
Afternoon Raag is a book about the uncertainty of youth and the strange inevitability of growing up. Its images are wonderfully vivid; its rhythms elastic and entrancing. Throughout it is haunted by the spirit of the music teacher, the master singer who gives shape to the elusive and annihilating passage of time.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1681378043
ISBN13:9781681378046
Release Date:May 2024
Publisher:New York Review of Books
Length:192 Pages
Weight:0.50 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.1" x 8.0"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
Beautiful and lyrical little gem of a book.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
This book is not very large but it packs a big punch! It is esentially the reminescences of an Indian student in Oxford. The power and beauty of the book lies in the wonderful descriptions contained herein. I grew up in Oxford (and it is where I enjoy being the most even now) and Chaudhuri captures the essence of the town beautifully. His free-flowing, beautiful writing is what makes this book such a delightful read and it is an wonderful way of losing oneself in memories of one of the prettiest places in the world to live in. In addition the author intermixes his experiences of Oxford with his memories of India and especially of his time with his music teacher. A delight.
A beautiful lyrical book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
This book is beautiful, wonderful to read, hauntingly poetic, and one of my favorites. I have never read anything like this before, and I can bet that you haven't either. Sit with it on a rainy day with a hot cup of tea on your favorite couch when you have nothing else on your mind, and get lost in the reverie.
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