THE CIRCLE OF REASON

by Amitav Ghosh ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 1986

In a first novel dense with incident and compelling characters, Ghosh (an Indian sociologist) spins the transcontinental adventures of Alu, a silent and sensitive young man with a gigantic potato-shaped head. Orphaned at eight, Alu arrives in the small village of Lalpukur (near Calcutta) to live with his childless aunt and uncle. Alu soon devotes himself to his uncle Balaram, a local teacher, caliper-wielding phrenologist and student of the Life of Pasteur. When Bhudeb Roy, the principal of the school where Balaram teaches, decides to close the school and go into politics, Balaram opens the Pasteur School of Reason, teaching weaving as well as more classical subjects. Obsessed with the school and a pet project (making the village antiseptic with carbolic acid), Balaram accidentally slides into a noisy and destructive feud with ex-principal Bhudeb Roy, who's also a police informer. After a resulting conflagration kills all his loved ones, Alu is labeled a dangerous extremist and must go on the lam. He flees to Al-Ghazira, where he teams up with a madam named Zindi and an extended family of businessmen, laborers and whores, and attempts to realize some of his late uncle's ideals (Alu's vision is of a moneyless society). But he's being pursued by a bird-loving Indian police officer, Jyoti Das, and this precipitates disaster. Soon Alu and Zindi must take off again, up the Red Sea and into the desert, where they eventually forge a peace with their pursuer and slide into a peace of their own. Alu's journey--part flight, part quest for a reconciliation between tradition and reason--is told with a well-tuned blend of wit and lyricism. But best here are the generously digressive characterizations--the result is an exuberant traffic jam of real people clinging to their mundane but noble goals (the obsessed Balaram is particularly memorable). A complex, often magical debut.

Pub Date: June 16, 1986

ISBN: 0618329625

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION