Imprint
- John Murray
Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Sparkling, comic novel set in modern India - Slumdog Millionaire meets White Tiger.
Seventeen-year-old Unni has done something terrible. The only clue to his actions lies in a comic strip he has drawn, which has fallen into the hands of his father Ousep - a drunken anarchist and nuclear spy. Ousep begins investigating the extraordinary life of his son, blissfully unaware that his long-suffering wife is plotting to kill him through the perfect murder.
Set in Madras in the 1980s, The Illicit Happiness of Other People is a darkly comic story involving an alcoholic's probe into the minds of the sober, the space and weapons programme of an impoverished nation, the plots of a brilliant housewife to finish off her husband, and the pure love of a boy for a beautiful girl.
More books by Manu Joseph
Praise for The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Darkly Comic Novel Set in Modern India
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Quite an achievement - The Economist
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Both wittily funny and darkly serious - Daily Mail
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Joseph's prose is exquisitely phrased without an excess of sentimentality...the confident, immersing voice of ILLICIT HAPPINESS promises readers this is not the last we've heard of Manu Joseph - Daily Telegraph
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A refreshing read - Time Out
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There's plenty to enjoy . . . the key revelations are powerful, as a final twist transforms the novel from an offbeat romp to a melancholy take on the age-old story of adolescent desire and its frustrations - Metro
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Praise for Serious Men:
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Manu Joseph's first novel elegantly describes collisions with an unyielding status quo, ably counterpointing the frustrations of the powerless with the unfulfilling realities of power. With this astute comedy of manners he makes a convincing bid for his own recognition as a novelist of serious talent, the latest addition to a roster of Indian writers who are creating fine literary art from their country's fearsome contradictions - Peter Carty, Independent
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Manu Joseph's satirical tale of an ostensibly new India still in thrall to its caste-ridden and sexist traditions is so much more than a mere comic caper . . . Sophisticated entertainment - Catherine Taylor, Guardian
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The finest comic novelists know that a small world can illuminate a culture and an age...with this sad-funny debut Joseph does just that - Boyd Tonkin, Books to light up lazy days, Independent
Manu Joseph
Manu Joseph is a columnist with the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times. The Illicit Happiness of Other People is his second novel. His first darkly comic novel, Serious Men, won the Hindu Best Fiction Award 2010 and was one of Huffington Post's 10 best books of 2010. He was also shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.
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