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All About H. Hatterr

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 · rating details · 133 ratings · 29 reviews

Wildly funny and wonderfully bizarre, All About H. Hatterr is one of the most perfectly eccentric and strangely absorbing works modern English has produced. H. Hatterr is the son of a European merchant officer and a lady from Penang who has been raised and educated in missionary schools in Calcutta. His story is of his search for enlightenment as, in the course of visiting...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published November 6th 2007 by NYRB Classics (first published 1948)

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Jun 02, 2008 keith koenigsberg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A tour de force, one of the great obscure books of all time. Desani wrote this wildly funny short novel in '48, a post-colonial Indian shaggy dog story. You will immediately recognize that you are reading something new here. The language is a paste-up, a farrago, a dog's dinner of the "'babu English,' the semi-literate, half-learned English of the bazaars, transmuted by erudition, highbrow monkeying around, and the impish magic of Desani's unique phrasing and rhythm into an entirely new kind of...more

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Feb 25, 2008 Katherine rated it 1 of 5 stars

I don't get this book. I heard so many great things about it, but I kept reading it and reading it and never once cared even a little bit about it. So I stopped after about 200 pages. This is what I get for listening to the New York Times Review of Books.

The problem is that this book's beauty is supposed to be in the words and not the plot, and I generally don't like books like that. Give me a story, not a poem. It was supposed to be hilarious, but I never got the joke. Some of the situations w...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am through reading this book. Now I will go back to its first page. I will start searching and copying by hand, with my pen and my Kama Sutra journal where I keep similar treasures.

I have seen several novels already with a lot of word plays. Some engage in word plays with apparent uncaring whimsicality; others deliberately seek obscurity to confound the readers and be talked about. This one does neither. The author Govindas Vishnoodas Desani(1909 - 2000)--haha, couldn't resist putting his year...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Razi rated it 5 of 5 stars

He is back, back in the print, back in literary discussions and back to his madcap adventures, H Hatterr is back. The Good Ol' Daddy of Indian novel in English, the one who added 'post' to the colonial, who took the micky out of everything in the ocean of humanity called India and moved on, crossed the ocean and found himself in "Blackpool, Lancs. The most unimaginable hell-hole I had ever unimagined." I read this book about 15 years ago when a friend lent me his precious but decomposing and dog...more

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Jun 26, 2009 Harry Rutherford rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: asia

All About H. Hatterr is a novel I bought after seeing it recommended somewhere — the complete review, I think. It is a modernist novel written in 1948 in a colloquial Indian English laced with bits of slang, Shakespeare, legal jargon and so on. I’m not in a position to judge the relationship between the language of the book and the English of India, but Salman Rushdie is quoted on the back cover:

Hatterr’s dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness...more All About H. Hatterr is a novel I bought after seeing it recommended somewhere — the complete review, I think. It is a modernist novel written in 1948 in a colloquial Indian English laced with bits of slang, Shakespeare, legal jargon and so on. I’m not in a position to judge the relationship between the language of the book and the English of India, but Salman Rushdie is quoted on the back cover:

Hatterr’s dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language…. This is the ‘babu English,’ the semi-literate, half-learned English of the bazaars, transmuted by erudition, highbrow monkeying around, and the impish magic of Desani’s unique phrasing and rhythm into an entirely new kind of literary voice.

It would be interesting to read the whole article which that comes from, but it’s hidden behind the New Yorker’s pay wall.

The book is narrated by the H. Hatterr of the title, the son of a European merchant seaman and a woman from Burma, raised and educated in missionary schools in Calcutta. It’s anecdotal and episodic in structure; there isn’t, at least for me at first reading, any kind of overarching plot. Picaresque might be a good word for it.

It is somewhat ‘difficult’ — it’s not for people who like their prose plain. But googling around while writing this post I’ve seen it compared to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and it’s certainly not that difficult. The prose is sometimes elaborate and colourful but otherwise fairly conventional: it’s not all stream-of-consciousnessy or anything. And there’s not a great deal of vocabulary from Indian languages. There’s more English public-school slang than there is Hindi.

PRESUMPTION: ‘Kismet’, i.e., fate — if at all anything, and as potent as suspected for centuries — is a dam’ baffling thing!
It defies a feller’s rational: his entire conception as to his soma, pneuma, and psyche!
Why did a feller like me commit matrimony with a femme fatale like Mrs H. Hatterr (née Rialto), the waxed Kiss-curl?
A personal query, but I don’t mind answering…
If only I could!
All I know is that I wanted to raise a family: add to the world’s vital statistics and legitimate: have a niche in the community, for my own kid, to hand out the wager till the end. And since you can’t achieve this without a wife — the neighbours wouldn’t let you! the police wouldn’t let you! — I equipped myself with the blarney-phrases, convinced this female that she was real jam, had me led to the middle aisle and gave the ready ‘I do’ to the amenwallah her brother had hired for the occasion.
This I did, knowing, hell, that between us was all the temperamental difference in the world!
Till death us do part! this museum-piece and I! And that promise — what a stingo! — after a conflict dating back to the donkey’s Sundays!
The female — contrast? — was poles apart: though, between the cur Jenkins, me and the Duke Humphrey, it did seem once that she was going to win my regards for good, by delivering me an heir-presumptive — my own piccolo le fils — to survive me (and be added to the looney-bin). But despite days and days of biological observation and anticipation — the wasted reference to the obstetric table and pre-occupation with the signs of labour — it didn’t come off. (Backed the wrong filly, or, maybe, something the matter with me as create-or!)

You probably have a pretty good idea whether that’s the kind of thing you like. Personally I enjoyed it, stylistically; occasionally there would be a particularly dense paragraph or two and I would glaze over a bit, but more often it was lively and funny.

My only reservation really is the one I have about a lot of these less traditional novels: I think perhaps the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I think people often overstate the importance of plots, but they are at least one way of holding a book together. Still, I’m glad I read it.(less)

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Jan 05, 2010 Stephanie Marie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: global-novels

"This is the Twentieth Century! This is the Medical Man's Century. No sentiment, no dog-cat or Romeo-Juliet imaginative stuff, but realistic brutal true-to-life pictures! What dam' use is there in reading what the Stratford-on-Avon feller wrote so long ago, and is himself dead and gone? Besides, hell, they say Bacon did it! I tell you, the Bacon-Shakespeare pictures won't tally with Life today! I know Life. I have experience..."

Some of the most gorgeously textured words to come out of modern lit...more

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Dec 31, 2012 [P] rated it 4 of 5 stars

People like me need a sidekick; a down-to-earth foil, a steadying influence, a partner in common-sense, rather than a partner in crime. I am constantly getting myself embroiled in ridiculous situations: downing a pint of tequila the first day of uni and nearly dying? Yup. Renting a room from a mad Scottish woman who ended up changing the locks on me while I was out one day? Yeah. Using an unfamiliar mobile phone to leave a pleasant voicemail for a friend and unintentionally [I thought I had ende...more People like me need a sidekick; a down-to-earth foil, a steadying influence, a partner in common-sense, rather than a partner in crime. I am constantly getting myself embroiled in ridiculous situations: downing a pint of tequila the first day of uni and nearly dying? Yup. Renting a room from a mad Scottish woman who ended up changing the locks on me while I was out one day? Yeah. Using an unfamiliar mobile phone to leave a pleasant voicemail for a friend and unintentionally [I thought I had ended the call – I hadn’t] also leaving a long expletive-filled P.S. about how I ‘can’t stand’ this person? Oh yes indeed. And those are only the tip, the tip of the tip, of the iceberg. So, yes, I need a Sancho Panza, a Doctor Watson; I need a Bannerrji.

Who is Bannerrji, you ask? He is H Hatterr’s sidekick, the ying to his yang. He is the one who raises an eyebrow and attempts to impart sound advice when Hatterr appears likely to get into a scrape. He is, too, like most sidekicks [and this I don’t need if you’re thinking of applying for the job] also responsible for, either intentionally or unintentionally isn’t always clear, exacerbating his master’s distress or for leading him into further calamitous situations.

It is their relationship, and their exchanges, that dominate the novel and provide the most laughs. The plot is episodic, and, well, rather skimpy. There’s a sage…? A lion…? Yes, definitely a lion who eats steak off Hatter’s chest. Er, what else…? Fear not, though, because Desani gives you in exchange for a meagre plot some of the most gorgeous and entertaining prose you’re ever likely to encounter [and it is nearly always an exchange – one hardly ever gets writing this good and brilliant plot]. The closest comparisons would be the Flann O’Brien of At Swim Two Birds, a little of Joyce circa Finnegans Wake, even a smidgen of Hoban’s Riddley Walker or Burgess’ Clockwork Orange. Desani’s intention was to mimic, or mirror, Indian-English, which, in this novel at least, is a sophisticated garbling of the English language that involves puns, word-play, and misquotes. It is this, really, this prose, this documenting, that elevates the novel above most other episodic works of this sort.

There is, within the library of every nation, one book that is considered to be the premier novel; the novel that captures something about what it means to belong to that nation. With that in mind I ask myself one last question: is All About H Hatterr the great Indian novel? Well, it isn’t overtly political, isn’t obviously moving, isn’t epic in the traditional sense, so most people would say no. However, it is the only one I have read that is unique, trail-blazing, and touched by genius, and isn’t that, really, what being great is all about? (less)

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Feb 01, 2008 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: underrated

It's back in print and nutty as ever!

After being expelled from his country club, H. Hatterr wanders across India, meeting seven sages with seven different lessons on life, each of which he narrowly escapes. The story itself is hilariously random and full of slapstick (our hero loses his pants at least once a chapter), but the real experience is in the novel's language - picture a funny, penetrable, linear pisstake on James Joyce and you've got the basic idea. Desani uses all manner of puns, misa...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-2007

This is more a prose poem than a novel--the characterizations are not based on actions, but on their ideas and the language they use to express those ideas. Hatterr is the innocent wanderer, an academic Don Quixote, searching for verbal wisdom, but with an underlying Sancho Panza's common sense. Although this is often described as a very funny book, the jokes are all part of the wordplay, which in the end overshadows the book itself.

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Jul 22, 2011 Taleem rated it 5 of 5 stars

The greatest English language novel from an Indian writer. Yes, its even better than Rushdie's Midnight's Children. First heard of this jewel back in 2003. Have read it several times since then. Couldn't believe this is Desani's only novel!!!.....English language writers from India barring Rushdie and maybe Amitav Ghosh can polish Desani's shoes......check this website out www.believermag.com/issues/200806/?re...

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Dec 24, 2011 Jeffra Hays rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nothing no book that I know of is anything like this. English is crunched up and tossed out reformed -- into hilarity. When it is so obvious that the author is enjoying his verbal antics, the reader has to enjoy too. If you like your fiction 'spoon-fed' don't go near this. But if you love wacky with underlying true tongues in cheeks, cheers!

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Dec 19, 2007 Melanie marked it as to-read

"Imagine a schnockered Nabokov impersonating The Simpsons' Apu while reeling off tales of an Anglo-Indian Don Quixote, and you get some sense of Desani's wacko masterwork—a hilarious mix of slapstick misadventure and philosophic vaudeville, voiced in a manic Hindu-accented English so jagged and dense it makes you dizzy. A 1948 bestseller in England, sporadically reissued since then, and now in the NYRB home of the almost-forgotten, the author's only novel follows the idealistic naïf H. Hatterr o...more

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Aug 27, 2009 Cody rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-indian-subcontinent, postcolonialism, favorites

A layered and complex text that launches a scathing critique aimed at both colonial India and the British Empire via picaresque, pseudo-18th century philosophical treatises, mimicry, doomed spiritual journeys, and a magnificent hybrid language that often matches the heights of Joyce’s wordsmithery (and to which Salman Rushdie is admittedly indebted). A powerful postcolonial argument, it’s also, perhaps, the funniest book I have ever read thanks to H. Hatter’s series of (mis)adventures throughout...more

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Apr 26, 2010 Alastair rated it 3 of 5 stars

At first I was totally into into the playful maelstrom of language. Eventually it got to be a bit much. I look forward to re-reading it in about a decade, when I think it will seem much funnier.

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Jul 25, 2012 Kartik rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book has its moments but, for the most part, I didn't get it despite all the rave reviews. I'll try reading again another day to see if I have a different take on it.

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Nov 03, 2010 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Tristam Shandy-esque/Tom Jones-y novel set in India. The language play is quite incredible, but the politics are hard to pin down. Read quickly, will probably have to return.

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Jan 30, 2011 Derek rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, bboy

BBOTY 2008

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May 18, 2010 Aishwarya rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was glorious. Irreverant and clever and just full of joy because the English language exists and that AAHH gets to exist within it. It made me incredibly happy.

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Sep 11, 2007 Macgregor rated it 5 of 5 stars

IT'S BACK IN PRINT!!

Until a few months ago, even the old trade paperbacks were seventy-five bucks a pop. I miss the old cover art though... caricature of a neatly mustachioed Indian man cradling some books, running naked from a lion.

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May 02, 2012 Caroline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: indian

Amazing play with language. Desani throws references to literary works from every culture into this, with puns, foreign languages, linguistic gymnastics and outlandish scenes. Lots of fun, but also a challenging read.

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Sep 14, 2007 Chris Holmes marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Apparently this is the Indian Ulysses, or Ulysses is the Irish All about H. Hatter; either way, it's a very hard book to get one's hands on. I am thinking about "holding on" to Brown's copy for "a while".

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Nov 03, 2010 Autumn Sabo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: finish-reading-later

A very odd, interesting book but slow reading because of the language - Brit/Indie/40s talk. I got SO CLOSE to finishing this...but who knows where it is now.

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May 26, 2008 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Deserves every bit of its billing as must-read lost Anglo-Indian Joycean classic - truly original and very funny.

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Jan 21, 2013 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

I wish I had known this book existed when I was in high school. It's astonishing.

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Oct 13, 2008 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lion tamers, bums and philosophers

An extremely curiously weirdly goofy yet erudite sort of novelish thing. I liked it.

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Dec 13, 2007 Bill marked it as to-read

http://www.veryshortlist.com/vsl/dail...

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Dec 13, 2007 Angie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: lost-interest

A bit too "english boys club" for me.

Tut, tut, cheerio, good feller.

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Nov 14, 2008 Halloalice rated it 5 of 5 stars

this book is awesome, i want to read it again

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Mar 28, 2008 JoAnna Spring marked it as to-read · review of another edition

From Very Short List

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May 13, 2013 Benjamin rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About G.V. Desani

Govindas Vishnoodas Desani or G. V. Desani, (1909–2000) was a Kenyan-born, British-educated Indian writer and Buddhist philosopher. The son of a merchant, he began his career as a journalist, and achieved fame with the cult novel All About H. Hatterr (1948), considered one of the finest examples of literature in English and a novel that compares favourably with Joyce's Ulysses. He was for a time a...more

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