Alchemy of Desire - Softcover

Tejpal, Tarun

3.62

1,877 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330435558 ISBN 13: 9780330435550

Publisher: Picador, 2006

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Quick-paced and inventive, brimming with ideas and memorable characters, The Alchemy of Desire celebrates the chaotic spirit of India at a time of great change. It also offers, in searing, lucid prose, a deeply sensual and moving account of the complex chemistry between sex, ambition and love. This is a major novel by one of the most significant new voices of his generation.

`A bold and weighty first novel... sex is practically a character in its own right here, endlessly examined in all its luscious, experimental glory... A memorable and impressive debut’ Sunday Times

‘Throughout, it reveals Tejpal’s eye for characterisation and description’ Guardian

‘The passion in the novel is deeply organic to the characters and the narrative. As an attempt to compel readers to look at desire without the crippling impulse of shame and hypocrisy, it works beautifully’ Independent

‘Throughout the novel, Tejpal`s sensuous language produces moments of breathtaking beauty, and he displays a poet`s joy in catching the feel, odour and appearance of the living world’ Big Issue

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About the Author:

Tarun Tejpal has enjoyed a 20-year career as a highly influential senior journalist and publisher. He was the editor of both India Today and Outlook, India’s premier news magazine. He has written for a number of international publications, including the Paris Review, the Guardian, the Financial Times and Prospect magazine. He lives in New Delhi.

From Publishers Weekly:

Sexual attraction between a nameless narrator and his wife, Fizz, provides the through line of this sweeping epic by journalist and editor Tejpal. The young, poor couple travel from a quiet town to New Delhi, then to a remote corner of the Himalayas, in pursuit of art and sex. The oft-distracted narrator is trying, with minimal success, to write the Great Indian Novel, and his search for inspiration (other than that offered by the luscious Fizz) is the impetus for decamping to the city and the Himalayas. Little actually happens in these places, however; the narrator's obsession with writing and sex rivals that of Henry Miller's, and Fizz, the muse and sexual dynamo, is a contemporary Mona (though less of a nag). Once set up in the mountain cabin, the narrator finds a long-abandoned stack of diaries and becomes absorbed by them, so much so that their content, about a Chicago woman's journey to India, takes over the book. The opening several hundred pages, though sprinkled liberally with titillating passages, feel like an endurance test. Heavy with ambition, Tejpal's debut will please readers looking for an Indian Rosy Crucifixion. (Dec.)
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