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English, August: An Indian Story

by Upamanyu Chatterjee, Akhil Sharma (Introduction)

3.74 of 5 stars 3.74 · rating details · 1,737 ratings · 150 reviews

Agastya Sen, known to friends by the English name August, is a child of the Indian elite. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job. The job takes him to Madna, “the hottest town in India,” deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies. What to do? Get...more

Paperback, 336 pages

Published April 4th 2006 by NYRB Classics (first published June 1988)

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Mar 17, 2012 Megha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: india, reviews

I am surprised that 'English, August' is not better known. It is well-written and is refreshingly funny. While the most outstanding aspect of this novel is its humor, what I like the best about it is that the story is told in such a genuine voice. For once this is not an NRI author trying to bring forth the truth about "real" India. Chatterjee draws heavily from his own experiences in the Indian administrative service to paint a picture of life in rural India, working of Government offices and b...more I am surprised that 'English, August' is not better known. It is well-written and is refreshingly funny. While the most outstanding aspect of this novel is its humor, what I like the best about it is that the story is told in such a genuine voice. For once this is not an NRI author trying to bring forth the truth about "real" India. Chatterjee draws heavily from his own experiences in the Indian administrative service to paint a picture of life in rural India, working of Government offices and bureaucracy in India of 1983. The story centers around a westernized city-boy Augustya who is stranded in a small village with a job he isn't interested in at all. The western influence on young generation and vast difference between urban and rural lives form a part of the theme as well.
There were many instances where I could easily picture the scenes in the book because it was all so familiar, it is a very Indian story.

Plot-wise not a lot seems to happen. But I guess this is a reflection of the situation at hand - just the way things don't seem to progress in government offices responsible for development and nothing seems to change from day-to-day in small villages and towns.

"Most novels progress, but this one simply chronicles an ongoing anomie and spiritual restlessness."-Washington Post.

Chatterjee doesn't let the narrative get dull at all. He presents a satirical and humorous view of the way things function. He introduces us to an array of characters who are not too far from the kind of people one could encounter in real life. And each of them is entertaining in his or her own way. Even if the situation is dull, he effortlessly evokes humor with his wit and play of words. The language perfectly complements the mood of the novel. It can be read multiple times and it still won't grow stale.

Without any doubt, Chatterjee's writing is way ahead of the likes of Adiga, Swarup or Bhagat. I am glad I came across this novel. Way to go Mr. Chatterjee!
I wanted to post some of the funny excerpts from the novel. But there are so many of them, I don't know how to pick. Just read the book...(less)

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Sep 26, 2012 Tanuj Solanki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library, india

"The mind is restless, O Krishna"

I couldn't at once decide - in fact, I debated it a lot internally - whether to brand Agastya Sen's story as a 3-star serio-comedy or a 4-star piece of literature. I've finally decided on the latter. There is much variability in the criticism that this book has received. My reasons for placing it where I have are below:

1. It is beautifully written, even after allowing for the fact that it is a first novel. The language is consistently top-class

2. It is an Indian...more "The mind is restless, O Krishna"

I couldn't at once decide - in fact, I debated it a lot internally - whether to brand Agastya Sen's story as a 3-star serio-comedy or a 4-star piece of literature. I've finally decided on the latter. There is much variability in the criticism that this book has received. My reasons for placing it where I have are below:

1. It is beautifully written, even after allowing for the fact that it is a first novel. The language is consistently top-class

2. It is an Indian story. Chatterjee mentions this obtusely in the novel: this is not the NRI author pining about India. This is an Indian author writing about the severity of dislocation that we Indians may sometimes feel in our own vast country. The character appear real enough (although the dialogues may sometimes appear to be unreal. But then, so many authors have been excused this.)

3. Although the many sly cultural references appear too cute at times, the main 'literary' ones - Bhagwad Gita and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations - are well used. The ending, with a superbly befitting quote from Marcus Aurelius, can be read many times without losing the pleasure in doing so.

4. Written just seven years after "Midnight's Children", the novel achieves a feat in not trying to ape the stupendous, but language-dependent, humour of Rushdie. Upamanyu has developed his own unique style, a blend of situation and causticity, that may often find the reader clutching his stomach.

5. Although there seem to be many variables floating throughout the novel - Indian bureaucracy, corruption, tribal development, moral turpitude among the ruling, etc. - Upamanyu resists the temptation to get preachy about these. This maturity is particularly appreciable - especially in my personal case - because of how it differs from the senility of Indian writers in Hindi (Case in point is Amritlal Nagar's "Karwat" which was written just three years before this book - and goes on and on about Swami Dayanand and arya Samaj and what not). Upamanyu relates this flotsam of topics to his protagonist's inner world beautifully, and never once does he commit the error of making the making the disillusioned Agastya take a side. Chatterjee classifies himself as an Indian Writer in English here.

But there are also the flaws of the first novel, which I believe a good editor would ahve tighetened a great de inserted only to accentuate the depiction of the dour and dull life of the protagonist. The reader can sometimes have too much of this life, yes. But all in all, the boredom manages not to seep too much, and the ride remains a humorous, enjoyable one.(less)

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Apr 20, 2007 Rahul Bhaskar rated it 5 of 5 stars

"The mind is indeed restless, Krishna."

Hajaar Fucked Book. My All Time Favorite. Chatterji tells the story of a young civil servant posted in a nondescript district in the hinterland. His feeling of dislocation and self-pity strikes a chord. And of course, there are the funny encounters. Sathe, the cartoonist, Mandy, the Pseud-American and Dhrubo-the "mother fucker".
The time period in which the book is set adds to the mood of it all. Early 80s. The unrest in the society is clearly reflected in t...more

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Aug 30, 2007 Maura Finkelstein rated it 3 of 5 stars

while possibly the most brilliant book I've encountered about bureaucracy, this novel crashes and burns around page 100, sadly dragging out it's swan song for another 200 pages.
Don't get me wrong: I truly appreciated the humorous story of a young Bengali man who, after enlisting in the Indian Administrative Service, finds his life directed to a small depressing dusty town 500 km from nowhere. How better to construct a backdrop for Sen's long hot days of locking himself in his stifling room, smok...more

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Nov 21, 2007 Sunil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviews, favorites

Actually a revisit; I am reading now with a friend, travelling across India ( Ah!! joy of reading aloud a passage on an Indian beach);

Had read it first time when I was a spring-chicken, hardly grasped its essence; Now having met so many Shrivatsavs, Kumars, Bhatias, Sathes, Mrs Rajans, even Vasanth, why even that bastard Tamse, I feel at home here, It is like returning to a childhood lover who has grown more gorgeous, on whose sweet shapely belly you can lay your head and wonder ... Why, The min...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Kyleigh Trott rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had to read this for an English class. I love reading books for English class, so don't you think I went into this with a bias. I was told it was going to be a hilarious, incredibly humorous book.

I was proven wrong.

Nothing made me smile about it. The main character, August, is sent to a city, Madna, to apprentice and take over his own position in the Indian Administrative Service.

It's boring. There's a lot of self-reflection, tons of purple prose, and August made me want to smack him across...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Indiabookstore rated it 4 of 5 stars

Like wine that improves as it ages, Agastya’s 24 year old story is still widely read by the young and old and as expected, Agastya makes us smile as we turn the last page of his story. Upamanyu Chatterjee doesn’t disappoint with his insight of the life of a new IAS recruit, Agastya Sen, fondly called August by his friends.

This classic was first published in 1988 and the fact that it’s still in print proves that it is a well-written story that many of us can still relate to. It is a guide to the...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Mary Mahoney rated it 2 of 5 stars

The praise on the book cover by authors such as Amit Chaudhuri and others I have truly respected raise expectations from the outset. On the plus side (with effort one can see a plus side), Agastya Sen, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer in training, describes the bureaucracy in large villages to intermediate towns and small tribal villages, exposing all of the non-governmental motives for IAS activities in the more remote reaches of the Indian government.
Moral character seems spread...more The praise on the book cover by authors such as Amit Chaudhuri and others I have truly respected raise expectations from the outset. On the plus side (with effort one can see a plus side), Agastya Sen, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer in training, describes the bureaucracy in large villages to intermediate towns and small tribal villages, exposing all of the non-governmental motives for IAS activities in the more remote reaches of the Indian government.
Moral character seems spread pretty thinly as the book's young hero obsesses with getting stoned and obtaining medical excuses for missing work. Among the most frequently used terms in the book: marijuana, stoned, masturbate, stare at the ceiling, and the four-letter word for "defecate" in all of its parts of speech--gerund, noun, infinitive, past tense, and so on.

Despite the fact that the smart arse and often flat narrative often fails as any grade of literature, there is genuine humor in Chatterjee's 322 page tome. One such instance is August Sen's observations of M.K. Ghandi's statue in front of public buildings. Regardless of the town, the Ghandi statues had become unstable and were shored up with a steel rod straight through the Mahatma's arsehole. August further notes that Ghandi's eyes bulge as if in response to the placement of the rod!

Imagine the same sort of writing being applied to statues of George Washington. The feckless observer would have been very lucky to have gotten off with complete ostracism. In the early 19th century some tar and feathers may have surfaced to decorate the commentator.

In a sometimes horrifying episode near the end of the book, Agastya Sen learns that he will be posted to a tribal area and have responsibility for its development. The tribals are experiencing a horrible drought, and are desperate for their well to be recharged by tankers that an IAS officer like Sen can command. There is a lot of deforestation. Fishing is threatened. There is a lack of sanitation, meaning that the tribals don't have adequate access to latrines. Sen makes light of this by using the word "shit" liberally. It's not the four letter word that's so offensive in my book; it's the human condition and its remedies that concern me. Is Sen going to do anything about the need for latrines? Is there any way the IAS can supply enough latrines for the small tribal population so that they can have the dignity and privacy they wish for? Or is there to be more stoning and joking about it?

There are some hauntingly beautiful descriptions of religious places in the forest on the water, and even Agastya admits that they take his breath away. He also seems to keep the beauty at arm's length by using vulgar words.
In the tribal areas of India, Maoists called "Naxalites" try to represent the tribals and push out the government of India. When visiting and talking with a Naxalite, August realizes the chilling truth that a friend in the IAS, Mohan, has had both arms amputated by the Naxalites for the offense of having sexual relations with a tribal woman. August cannot find his friend despite a determined search. Finally, after months of no consequences, August runs up against a solid barrier to living a hedonistic life.(less)

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Jun 03, 2010 Vinay Bharat rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Agastya Sen, (rather August, as he prefers to be called), the central character of ENGLISH,AUGUST has got everlasting echo that carries the essence of new "cola generation" in the very first page of the novel itself:
"Amazing mix,the English we speak. Hazar fucked.Urdu and American.I am sure nowhere else could languages be mixed with such ease".(p.1)
Having a burden of colonial imperialism,English August is more than enough to show that English which was the language of our intellectual make-up ha...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Rukmini rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone and everyone

'How old are you, sir?'
'Twenty-eight.'Agastya was twenty-four, but he was in a lying mood. He also disliked their faces.
'Are you married, sir?' Again that demand that he classify himself. Ahmed leaned forward for each question, neck tensed and head angled with politeness.
'Yes.' He wondered for a second whether he should add 'twice'.
'And your Mrs, sir?' Agarwal's voice dropped at 'Mrs'; in all those months all references to wives were in hushed, almost embarrassed, tones. Agastya never knew why,...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Arun Divakar rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

A fresh recruit to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and his friend sit in their car, totally stoned and deliberating the relative merits of being a bureaucrat. Of top importance here is genuine concern of our protagonist's capability in being an efficient administrator. Here is how the conversation goes :

Friend : Out there in Madna quite a few people are going to ask you what you're doing in the Administrative Service. Because you don't look the role. You look like a porn film actor, thin...more A fresh recruit to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and his friend sit in their car, totally stoned and deliberating the relative merits of being a bureaucrat. Of top importance here is genuine concern of our protagonist's capability in being an efficient administrator. Here is how the conversation goes :

Friend : Out there in Madna quite a few people are going to ask you what you're doing in the Administrative Service. Because you don't look the role. You look like a porn film actor, thin and kinky, the kind who wears a bra. And a bureaucrat ought to be soft and clean shaven, bespectacled, and if a Tamil Brahmin, given to rapid quoting of rules. I really think you're going to get hazaar fucked.

Protagonist : I'd much rather act in a porn film than be a bureaucrat. But I suppose one has to live.

Friend : Let's smoke a last one, shall we ?

It was an excellent introduction to a novel character Agastya Sen who finds his befuddled way into the labyrinth of the administrative hassle of the Indian sub continent. His first posting as the lines above depict is to a place named Madna which is literally like saying it is in the middle of nowhere. The town is like an armpit for a city-bred, sophisticated youngster like Agastya and the government machinery in which he is now a part appears to him as the peak of inefficiency and complacence. Coupled with this is the mounting sense of loneliness and the absurd way in which the occupants of this small town appear to him. They are all caricatures and never fail to have him ( or us the readers) cracking up in silent mirth !

Agastya finds his relief in three things : marijuana, masturbation and loneliness. It is a slow slide into insanity for him and the only two things to keep him company are two books : a copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and the Bhagavad Gita. In the rare moments when his mind is not clouded by the blue smoke of marijuana, he finds intellectual solace in these works. The tale makes you feel an almost overpowering feel of dislocation for not one of the main characters are where they wanted to be in life. August has a huge differentiating factor from all of them in the sense that he has absolutely zero ambition in his life. Now I know someone like this personally and the person lives life each day at a time and never worries about his career at any point. He switches off his mind after office hours and goes home. The end result being that he climbs the steps of the corporate ladder much more easily than all the other rats who run as if their tales are on fire. Agastya is of the same breed for all that he can feel is a disjointed state of mind with the rest of the world. He is quite happy to let the world pass him by and will perhaps wave at the world halfheartedly if pressed to do so. Unfortunately, the world never gives him the peace of mind he so craves. His reflections and mental dialog in times of solitude at points was so engrossing to me personally that I could not discern where my thoughts ended and the character's thoughts began !

The book is extremely hilarious and at many a point had me collapsing in laughter. The sarcastic answers by August to the middle aged colleagues are simply a treat ! But beneath this sheen of comic relief lies a bare-bones look at the stranglehold that bureaucracy has on rural India. The lethargy and inertia of the Sarkari Babus ( read as officials) is the punching bag on which Chatterjee lands his most powerful blows. As a reader, I however felt that the author did not give corruption among this mass it's due attention in this tale. Lethargy will only win the second prize when compared to how much corruption has rusted the machinery of Governance in India.

I never did know that this was a debut novel for such is the flair with which Chatterjee has written this novel.

One of the best reads in 2012 and very highly recommended.(less)

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Jun 11, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, humor, nyrb, indian-lit

English, August is fundamentally a comedy, but I would rather call it a serio-comic reflection on a young Indian man of intelligence who exhibits, among other things, an ennui that permeates his actions and choices throughout the novel. It is the story of Agastya Sen, known to his friends by the English name, August, who is a member of the Indian elite, educated at Yale, and recently ensconced in a prize government job. It is a job which takes him to Madna, "the hottest town in India," deep in t...more English, August is fundamentally a comedy, but I would rather call it a serio-comic reflection on a young Indian man of intelligence who exhibits, among other things, an ennui that permeates his actions and choices throughout the novel. It is the story of Agastya Sen, known to his friends by the English name, August, who is a member of the Indian elite, educated at Yale, and recently ensconced in a prize government job. It is a job which takes him to Madna, "the hottest town in India," deep in the rural countryside. Surrounded by an amalgam of neer-do-wells, bureaucrats and characters of various kinds that share only the common characteristic of being both annoying and of no interest to August he wonders what to do? While settling into a self-indulgent life that includes both pot and pleasing himself he incongruously he begins reading a combination of Marcus Aurelius and the Bhagavad Gita.
"In those months he grew to like immensely this wise sad Roman. Marcus immediately made him feel better, because Marcus seemed to have more problems than anyone else--not the soul-squashing problems of being poor, but the exhilarating abstract problems of one immersed wholly in his self."(p 80)
On the recommendation of one of his new acquaintances, who runs his father's hotel, he also begins to read the Gita.
"Thus, through happenstance, Agastaya could place the Bhagavad-Gita beside Marcus Aurelius on his shelf. . . Most passages were abstruse, but Agastaya was surprised by some:"(p 96)
Omnipresent throughout the novel was the ennui of this young man who had no direction in his life and no interest the profession that had been chosen for him by his father, prestige notwithstanding. August, on the contrary, after almost two hundred pages he thinks:
"No emotion was sacredly his own, and he half-hope that his restlessness would thus succumb to attrition. Perhaps his mind would finally realize that its disquietude was merely an index of its immaturity, as inevitable a sign of growing-up as the first emission of semen, as universal as excrement, and about as noteworthy."(p 195)
"At night he would lie awake and hear the clack of his uncle's typewriter and watch the dark shape of the bougainvillaea outside the window, and see in its twists and turns a million things, but never his future."(p 197)
Yet this is a comic novel. One that is filled with humorous characters, recognizable to anyone familiar with bureaucracies. The omnispresent heat and fecundity of life demonstrated, to the consternation of August, in mosquitoes and animal feces, presents an unquestionable level of discomfort that is put to use for comic purposes. But the central irony is Agastya himself and that is no better illustrated than by the derivation of his name. His doctor's father shares this near the end of the story:
"Agam is mountain. Agastya could be agam plus asyat, one who pushes a mountain. Or agam plus styayati, one who stops a mountain. We often have this ambiguity, and uncertainty about our names, their origins."
There may also be a suggestion of Sisyphus in all this mountain-pushing business, but perhaps not. What is present is great irony when considering the life of this young dreamer of uncertain origins who is adrift in the heart of India near the start of a life that may merely drift off into the future.(less)

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May 14, 2012 Parikhit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: indian-authors

I am surprised with the book, an absolute thrill, and baffled at why I kept postponing this book! Cheeky, sarcastic, tremendously funny and honest, ‘English, August’ is a riot and Upamanyu Chatterjee marvellously combines wit and humour. There could not have been a more genuine account of the pathos and stagnancy in the Indian bureaucracy. It is, broadly, a humorous tale of minor-urban-anglicised-India coming face to face with the major-rural- anachronistic-India.

Agastya, a young IAS trainee and...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Nom rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I remember this book had quite the cult following when I was growing up in India in the late 90s, and I read it when I was 15 or 16 and liked it. Since I didn't remember much of it, I picked it up again all these years later, and was surprised at how much I STILL like this book.

The basic plot centers around Agastya Sen, who is a 24-year-old officer-in-training of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). He is an urbanite who has grown up in Delhi and Calcutta and was schooled in a fancy private...more I remember this book had quite the cult following when I was growing up in India in the late 90s, and I read it when I was 15 or 16 and liked it. Since I didn't remember much of it, I picked it up again all these years later, and was surprised at how much I STILL like this book.

The basic plot centers around Agastya Sen, who is a 24-year-old officer-in-training of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). He is an urbanite who has grown up in Delhi and Calcutta and was schooled in a fancy private school in Darjeeling. An anglophone with some "Western" ideas, he feels out-of-place and estranged when he is posted to Madna, which is a semi-rural small town somewhere in the middle of India. He feels linguistically and ideologically estranged from his surroundings, and is critical of the manner in which govenrment officers work and rule the populace--their inefficiency is peculiarly Indian while their social structure mimics the Raj.

All this sounds very heavy, but this book is FUNNY. Very, very funny--the author's observations of people and situations are sharp and smart. Chatterjee has a real knack at highlighting absurdities while still keeping his characters very real; unlike so many satires/ attempts at humor by other authors, the characters in this book aren't hyperbolic or simply "types." What we get, instead, is the absurd ordinariness of every day life.

One of the biggest differences in my reaction to it on a second read is that the first time around, I loved the first half while I thought the second half was very slow; but this time around, I felt the opposite. Yes, there is some unncesessary rambling in parts of this book, but stick it through: the book is wiser and more thoughtful in its second half (with interesting ideas of the Other in a complicated country like India, and the difficulty of solving issues like poverty and illiteracy ), and Agastya becomes almost likeable.

This book, as many people have said, is very "Indian," and I think this is because it feels as though the author has written it for a primarily Indian audience. Of course, some Indian-isms are sometimes (embarassingly) explained, but I do think a reader would need to be familiar with India to really "get" some situations and characters. The landscape, too, while described very well, would be more vivid if one has some familiarity with Indian small towns. And yet, this is the one book set in India that I recommend to my non-Indian friends because it builds up the country in a way I see it, and Agastya and his friends think and behave like people I know. (This, I'm sure, has to do with the fact that I am also, like Agastya, from urban India, for whom rural India is a whole other world.)

Despite all these positives, this book has several flaws. As I've said before, it rambles in sections, and could definitely have been tightened. Agastya's compulsive lying and pot-smoking get old, especially since they lead to nothing important plot-wise. There's a significant amount of misogyny that feels gratuitous and made Agastya seem odd and perverted. Agastya's world is a very male world--Neera, the only female character in the book whom he seems to actually like and who interests him, it seems, intellectually as well as sexually, is incompletely rendered, and her presence in the novel is confusing.

But still, this is a first novel and I feel these shortcomings can be forgiven. I'm curious to read more of Chatterjee's work. (less)

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Apr 03, 2012 Tuck rated it 4 of 5 stars

a classic modern indian novel of a young man starting his career in the IAS indian admin service. many funny and cynical jokings of country folk and bureaucrats, our protag august is in training in madna, a hot, dusty, very out-of-the-way town where he learns the ropes of running the biggest free country in the world. cynical in that his heart really isn't in it and bides his time smoking doobies and jacking off, while drinking and cadging suppers off his bosses and friends. after this stellar s...more

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Mar 31, 2011 Sudhamshu Hebbar rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is an Indian story. Not the story of an expatriate who just returned from the First World countries in the West to point out the flaws of the country. Not the Chetan Bhagat style story of a metropolitan misfit who goes in search of love and lust. This is India in its pure naked self made bare to be scrutinised, to be amused upon and to continue living in it.
There are plenty of connections that every Indian can make to the descriptions. Many connections on the insecurity, loneliness and in...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Sunil Kumar marked it as to-read

I decided to read this book, moved by the praise of this novel by many. I started reading this book very enthusiastically but soon I started getting signals that I have been trapped in wrong place where I never wanted to be. I could hardly reach up to 40-50 pages before I was filled to unsustainable extent with disgust and awkwardness born out of supersexual ways to look at things, then I slammed the book on floor at very perversive and sadistic revelation by writer.

This writers looks to me a st...more

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Mar 10, 2010 Lee Anne rated it 2 of 5 stars

Agastya "August" Sen is in training with the Indian Administrative Service. He is sent to the remote town of Madna to learn the job.

The back cover blurb for this book suggests it is the Indian equivalent of The Catcher in the Rye or A Confederacy of Dunces, but I think it is instead the fictional equivalent of the Indian Administrative Service: dull, repetitive, confusing.

Agastya pays no attention to the job, gets stoned a lot, masturbates, calls in sick, lies for no reason, visits other places...more

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Jun 28, 2007 Mayuri rated it 4 of 5 stars

The reason I liked this book is because it was written so truly, so genuinely, and if you've read any recent Indian modern fiction, you get the idea that India is overly romantic and idealized and a little unrealistic - on the contrary, this book presents the truest India with a sense of humor.

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Jan 12, 2011 Sameer rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book- full of satire and witty humor....It takes a dig at the various aspects around the famed Indian Administrative Services (IAS). The novel is written as a first-hand account of one Agastya Sen, who lands up in a small town called Madna for an year-long stint as part of his first posting with the IAS. Agastya's character in the novel is really well-etched out and evokes empathy when he (as a city-bred sophisticated guy) ends up serving his stint at a desolate hinterland of a vill...more

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Apr 04, 2012 PointyEars42 rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: must-read-again

"We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity."

I read this when I was 19/20 and knew nothing about the real world but declared it one of my favourite books anyway. Now I realise that sometime in my immediate future, I will find a time machine and send this novel back to my younger self as a warning about the horrors of the working world and of what time & tedium will do to you. Of cou...more

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Aug 08, 2009 Sandhya rated it 4 of 5 stars

http://sandyi.blogspot.com/2009/08/bo...

I know English, August came a long time ago, and though I remember catching glimpses of the film and being intrigued by it, I never got around to reading the book. I finally did read it and was amazed at how fresh and timeless this Upamanyu Chatterjee book still feels. The book was written in the late 80s and recounts the author's stint as an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer in a small district town in Madna. At that time, it got a great cult fo...more http://sandyi.blogspot.com/2009/08/bo...

I know English, August came a long time ago, and though I remember catching glimpses of the film and being intrigued by it, I never got around to reading the book. I finally did read it and was amazed at how fresh and timeless this Upamanyu Chatterjee book still feels. The book was written in the late 80s and recounts the author's stint as an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer in a small district town in Madna. At that time, it got a great cult following, not just for the story, but the way it was recounted –with generous use of cuss words, sexually explicit passages and all of that. I dare say, this remains as sharp a read as it possibly was then.

Born and bred in metros like Calcutta and Delhi, the book's 24 year old protagonist, Agastya Sen feels completely disoriented to be posted in an underdeveloped, far-flung place in Central India. The abysmal living conditions unsettle him. And with his habit of smoking marijuana and being stoned most of the time, Agastya finds himself in a perpetual state of daze, even as he listlessly goes about with his job. He's struck by the laidback attitude of the administrative community, trying to battle with the trying conditions of the place. The collector -Mr Srivastava leading a relatively lavish lifestyle - keeps the social scene quite vibrant. Work takes a back seat for everyone and Agastya, caught in lethargy and inertia, is happy to get away with doing little or nothing. Most of the time his head is spinning, as he wonders what a guy like him could be doing in a place like Madna. But such is the heaviness he feels all round him, that he cannot gather the will to pull himself together.
It’s a vicious circle and the author brilliantly and skillfully describes page after page Agastya’s growing sense of boredom, frustration and farcical existence.

“God, he was fucked – weak, feverish, aching, in a claustrophobic room, being ravaged by mosquitoes, with no electricity, with no sleep, in a place he disliked, totally alone, with a job that didn’t interest him, in murderous weather, and now feeling madly sexually aroused. His stomach contracted with his laughter. He wanted to rebel. He said loudly, ‘I’m going to get well, shave my head, put on a jock strap and jog my way out of here’

It’s really one person’s account as he goes by his life aimlessly, but Upamanyu Chatterjee infuses his story with such varied and colourful episodes, dots it with so many nuanced characters, creates such a perfect sense of the place, that you are effortlessly drawn into a narrative that stays vibrant in spite of the essential static life of Agastya. And all this is recounted with a brazen sense of abandon and wry humour that it makes you chuckle and smile.

More admirably, the author brings a rare emotional nakedness and searing honesty to his protagonist’s internal monologues and observations, not felt by me since James Joyce’s A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man. There are several brilliant passages that bare the protagonist’s inner most feelings but I continued to be amazed by Upamanyu Chatterjee’s power of perception and his ability to wrench out those thoughts so well.

“The noise of the jeep made sustained conversation impossible foe which Agastya was happy. He could slide down in his seat till his neck rested against its back and, without chafing, allow his mind its restlessness. In a jeep, he would smile and argue with himself, you can do nothing about your mind or your future, not until the journey is over. In a moving jeep he was not vexed by the onus of thought....

Since one assumes that the author has brought a great deal of his own personal experiences during his posting in the book and Agastya seems to be his alter ego, one wonders why he didn’t use the first person. Not that it makes a big difference but one would think of it as a natural option to take, considering that the narration is entirely from the protagonist’s point of view. Maybe a second reading will throw some light on that.

To sum up, the book feels as fresh to read today as ever. Easily, this has to be one of the most brilliantly written and genuinely edgy reads for me.
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Feb 23, 2013 Yogesh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fav-s

This book revolves around Agastya Sen aka August aka English as called by his friends and his stint at IAS. He, never an IAS type got selected in the same and posted in an underdeveloped small own Madna. The language going all over his head he started his job under Mr Srivastva the Assistant Collector who seems to like scowling a lot and think that it will definitely get the work done.The book contains a lot many passages which is sexually explicit and you'll be amazed to know his inner desires...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Dayanand Prabhu rated it 5 of 5 stars

Out of all the feeling you can convey to another soul, 'lack of ambition' would be the hardest to explain. Although Agustya had a different personality, we shared the Anchorlessness and the friendship was inevitable. After reading the book half a dozen times I finally write a review. A plot less, plainly narrated story with a lot of obscene humor is a real treat. But this book at times can be dangerous, it encourages cynicism, which could grown on you to a point where it becomes a addiction. But...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Pawan rated it 4 of 5 stars

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I think this was the first book that I read as the symbol of contemporary Indian English writing and that too on a subject that was topmost in my mind at that time. Yes, I was thinking about civil services as career during those days when I read this book. The beginning of the book was a bit difficult for me to understand but once I adapted to Upamanyu Chatterjee’s way of writing, I enjoyed it a lot. I have read some more of his books as well but it seems to me tha...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Pratik Doshi rated it 5 of 5 stars

"The mind is restless, Krishna, impetuous, self-willed, hard to train: to master the mind seems as difficult as to master the mighty winds."

"The mind is indeed restless, Arjuna: it is indeed hard to train. But by constant practice & freedom from passions the mind in truth can be trained."

As far as I remember, the first time I heard about English August was in some article about the birth of the indie-cinema in India. 4-5 years back I read a book titled "Keep off the Grass" by Karan Bajaj. Th...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Charu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The frivolously rude book is written with humor and candor. Cheeky, sarcastic and impregnated with the characters, recognizable to anyone familiar with bureaucracies - sycophant colleagues, overbearing boss, infamous police inspector and unreliable servants makes it convincing and gripping.

The book builds around, Agastya, a half-Bengali, half-Goan guy, who procures a bureaucratic post in the Indian civil service and is posted to a rural village for his training. However, the book doesn’t feature...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Suchitra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: by-us-for-us

funny quite a few times made me laugh. describes a world i do not know.
a bit vulgar and disgusting at times and i did wonder if he had to write those parts. but maybe it is all true. just that i do not have that much of a clue about a person like august. but entertaining on the whole.
he makes fun of indian diaspora writing about india calling their characters unreal. and i thought...well your characters are so real that u can afford to do that.....
his characters are so so real. almost all of us...more

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Jun 27, 2012 René rated it 5 of 5 stars

My father used to disappear in the evenings.

After supper, when my mother, brother and I would sit in front of the tv to watch Cheers, Moonlighting, Family Ties, this soft-spoken, mild-mannered Bengali man would take the dog and quietly slip out the kitchen door to spend hours walking in the woods behind our house.

I hope that the magic of those evenings spent in the silence of the forest somehow compensated for living thousands of kilometres from his family in India, in a god-forsaken Canadian hi...more My father used to disappear in the evenings.

After supper, when my mother, brother and I would sit in front of the tv to watch Cheers, Moonlighting, Family Ties, this soft-spoken, mild-mannered Bengali man would take the dog and quietly slip out the kitchen door to spend hours walking in the woods behind our house.

I hope that the magic of those evenings spent in the silence of the forest somehow compensated for living thousands of kilometres from his family in India, in a god-forsaken Canadian hick town freezing his ass off with no friends to speak of. I hope so because he got no gratitude from his own sons, sullen little bastard that I was biding my time in that rural backwoods and looking forward to coming of age in the sophistication of the biggest city I could think of. In retrospect, I suspect that with children out of the picture, he would have gone back to India, or at least to Montreal or Toronto, both of which fostered Bengali communities.

I can only speculate.

He never voiced any regret at the choices he had made that led to the life he led. Like all parents, his inner life was mostly shielded from his children. And so, while I won’t compare him to the character of Agastya in this book (for one, my father never smoked marijuana or thought about sex, ever), that universal, desolate immigrant’s alienation certainly made me think of him while reading it, which is telescopic in a sense because Agastya himself is also thinking of his father during his stay in Madna.

It’s very difficult to articulate exactly what this book elicited in me while reading and make it cohere, so I’ll just throw stuff at the ceiling like semi-cooked pasta and hope some of it sticks, to amuse the guests.

Agastya (August) is an Indian Administrative Service officer in training, who has left the bustling energy of Calcutta for a forlorn existence in Madna, buffeted from one official to the next and trying to conserve some sense of self. He is unhappy, and lends this unhappiness the credence it warrants.

Afternoons, he spends time with exiles such as himself, drinking whiskey, smoking marijuana and voicing desultory thoughts. His mind wanders, restless, and during sleepless evenings he engages in nightly runs to tire his body and force it to remember what life should feel like. He sits in his room listening to of jazz music on cassette player (the story takes place in the 80’s) and reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He suspects that his cook serves him faeces so scrounges meals off his social acquaintances and observes their family dynamics.

But Agastya is not lazy or without ambition. He aspires whole-heartedly to be happy. His senses are keen and he is always on lookout for perspective on his existence, the possibility of a way out, the conclusions of kindred travellers.
I read this book in the mornings. After dropping off my younger girl at school, I walk toward work and stop off every day at a youth hostel in Paris’ 19th arrondissement that has an open café. There, seated in a corner with my coffee and book, I hear other languages, mostly European but also some Asian, people come from all over, there’s a tingling in the air. It’s a good place to read a book like this one, steeped in an sense of passage, of curiosity, of search.
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Nov 12, 2012 Deepak rated it 4 of 5 stars

English, August is the story of Agastya Sen, and his journey as he gets "hazaar fucked" in Madna as an IAS trainee. A victim of a rather familiar combination of brilliance and aimlessness, he battles over the difficult choice of a laid-back, megalopolitan life versus a reputable job in places in the middle of nowhere.

The novel oscillates smoothly between extremes - from a stoned Agastya rattling off rubbish in front of his colleagues and stealing his senior's car keys just to create mischief, t...more

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Indian Readers: English, August: An Indian Story (May'12 Group Read)	29	135	Sep 25, 2012 07:34am
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About Upamanyu Chatterjee

Upamanyu Chatterjee is an Indian author and administrator, noted for his works set in the Indian Administrative Service. He has been named Officier des Arts et des Lettres (Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters), by the French Government.

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“We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.” — 18 people liked it

“In his essay,Agastya had said that his real ambition was to be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best life.They were assured of food,and because they were stray they didn't have to guard a house or beg or shake paws or fetch trifles or be clean or anything similarly meaningless to earn their food.They were servile and sycophantic when hungry;once fed,and before sleep,they wagged their tails perfunctorily whenever their hosts passes,as an investment for future meals.A stray dog was free,he slept a lot,barked unexpectedly and only when he wanted to,and got a lot of sex.” — 6 people liked it

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