false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182274751m/1252537.jpg 1252537 8 Wildly funny and wonderfully bizarre, G. V. Desani's <i>All About H. Hatterr </i>is an altogether incomparable creation, though it's fair to say that it stands with Flann O'Brien's <i>At Swim Too Birds</i> as one of the most perfectly eccentric and strangely absorbing works modern English has produced. It is among other things a book that helped make <i>Midnight's Children</i> possible, because, as Salman Rushdie has written, "it showed how English could be bent and kneaded until it spoke in an authentically Indian voice." 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 seven different oriental cities, he consults with seven different sages, each of whom specializes in a different aspect of 'Living.' Each teacher delivers himself of a great 'Generality,' each great Generality launches a new great 'Adventure,' from each of which Hatter escapes not so much greatly edified as by the skin of his teeth. The book is a comic extravaganza, but as Anthony Burgess has written, "it is the language that makes the book, a sort of creative chaos that grumbles at restraining banks. It is what may be termed Whole Language, in which philosophic terms, the colloquialisms of Calcutta and London, Shakespearean archaisms, bazaar whinings, quack spiels, references to the Hindu Pantheon, the jargon of Indian litigation, and shrill babu irritability seethe together. It is not pure English; it is like Shakespeare, Joyce, and Kipling, gloriously impure." 2323804 1970 All About H. Hatterr total:56|5:24|4:13|3:11|2:3|1:5| 56 216 231 15 1 1 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 13 09:32:04 -0800 2007 Mon Feb 25 07:04:24 -0800 2008
The problem is that this book's ...more...]]> 3 1 false false Fri Jun 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 09:35:51 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 09:37:27 -0700 2009 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 bet...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Feb 01 18:31:28 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 01 19:00:45 -0800 2008
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 ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jun 02 09:07:58 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 02 09:22:46 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 1 false false Wed Dec 19 08:26:14 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 19 08:27:06 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun May 24 14:57:11 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 10:33:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Sep 11 11:02:15 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 11:08:13 -0700 2007 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.]]> 0 0 false false Fri Sep 14 05:09:47 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 14 05:11:14 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Mon May 26 22:01:52 -0700 2008 Mon May 26 22:03:40 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu May 28 06:07:21 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 22:19:34 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri May 16 23:21:33 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 13 20:35:34 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Thu Dec 13 08:56:44 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 13 08:58:08 -0800 2007 http://www.veryshortlist.com/vsl/daily.c...]]> 1 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Nov 12 14:13:24 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 13 15:23:00 -0800 2007
Tut, tut, cheerio, good feller.]]> 5 0 false false Fri Nov 14 10:25:09 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 14 10:35:11 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Fri Mar 28 13:32:40 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 28 13:32:40 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Mon Nov 09 18:11:15 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 18:11:15 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Oct 27 19:17:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 27 19:17:00 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Oct 18 12:48:58 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 18 12:48:58 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Oct 10 10:08:59 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 10 10:08:59 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Oct 09 08:32:32 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 09 08:32:32 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1252537