Upamanyu Chatterjee was born in 1959. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. His published works include short stories and the novels English, August: An Indian Story (1988), The Last Burden (1993), The Mummeries of the Welfare State (2000),
which won the Sahitya Akademie Award for writing in English, Weight Loss (2006) and Way to Go (2011), which was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award. In 2008, he was awarded the Order of Officer des Arts et des Letters by the French Government for his contribution to literature.
Innocent and unremarkable, but for his near crippling obsessions with sex and running, Bhola goes through life falling for all the wrong people.
At School, he lusts indiscriminately after his teachers, both male and female, and is equally attracted to eunuchs. While in college, he has vaguely demeaning affairs with his landlady, and a vegetable vendor-cum-nurse and her husband. Later, he marries (a woman with a voice like liquid gold), fathers a daughter and suspects he is close to balance and beauty. Then his past catches up with him.
Upamanyu Chatterjee’s genius for black humour and the absurd has never been more compelling than in this unforgettable portrait of a lost life.