Politics: A Novel - Hardcover

Thirlwell, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007163665 ISBN 13: 9780007163663

Publisher: Harper, 2003

Synopsis

Moshe -- young, half-Jewish, hyper -- loves Nana. But love can be difficult. It is especially difficult if you both want to be kind to someone else. And Moshe and Nana want to be kind to Anjali -- a second-generation Indian actress with an ambiguous sex life.

Politics explores crucial domestic problems of sexual etiquette. What should the sleeping arrangements be in a ménage à trois? Is it polite to read while two people have sex beside you? Is it permissible to be jealous?

Politics is a comedy about kindness. It is also a love story. It is a love story with digressions.

It considers Milan Kundera, blow jobs, Chairman Mao's personal hygiene, Bollywood, Václav Havel, shopping, Hitler's sexual fetishes, selfishness, Osip Mandelstam, premature ejaculation, the late Queen Mother, thrush, Stalin on the phone, politeness, pink fluffy handcuffs, and Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony.

Politics is not about politics.

Tender, shocking, and playful, Politics is the most original fiction debut this year.

About this title

About the Author:

Adam Thirlwell was born in London in 1978. He is the author of two novels, Politics and The Escape, and a book on the international art of the novel, which won a Somerset Maugham Award. In 2003, he was chosen by Granta magazine as one of the Best Young British Novelists. His work is translated into 30 languages.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this nervy, self-conscious debut novel, British writer Thirlwell airs the unspoken anxieties and confusions of two lovers, crafting a talky deconstruction of a relationship. Moshe is a character actor, "the sketchy one, the sardonic one, the oddball cool"; Nana is an architecture student, "tall, thin, pale, blonde, breasty." It is the off-stage narrator, however, who is the book's most notable presence, with his countless digressions, "simple" theories, lengthy explanations and bossy directives. Despite his repeated assertions that the book is not about sex ("sex isn't everything"; "sometimes I think that this book is an attack on sex"), Moshe and Nana are constantly experimenting ("oral sex, use of alternative personae, lesbianism, undinism"), though their experiments usually end in failure. This is true of their biggest experiment, a three-way affair involving Anjali, an Anglo-Indian actor friend of Moshe's. Reading Thirlwell's novel is similar to watching a film with the director in the room, guiding the viewer through every scene. While many of the resulting narrative flourishes are clever or endearing, their humor and intellectual cachet wear thin as the ratio of window dressing to substance tips heavily in favor of the former. Still, Thirlwell's brave attempt to debunk the primacy of sex (while elaborately describing his characters' hapless pursuit of it) is surprisingly convincing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0007163665
• ISBN 13: 9780007163663
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288