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The Impressionist

3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 · rating details · 1,246 ratings · 116 reviews

Pran Nath Razdan, the boy who will become the Impressionist, was passed off by his Indian mother as the child of her husband, a wealthy man of a high caste. Pran lived a life of luxury just downriver from the Taj Mahal, but at fifteen, the news of Pran’s true parentage is revealed to his father and he is tossed out into the street—a pariah and an outcast. Thus begins an ex...more

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Published March 25th 2003 by Plume (first published 2002)

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Oct 06, 2012 Jonfaith rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This proved to be an exceptional novel to read while waiting at an Immagration office. Such a strange place, much like Old Trafford, the offices are unmistakingly dream factories. It would be unpleasant to wake most of the occupants. A friend from England raved over this novel and while I enjoyed such, it didn't sweep me away in a gale. It does make one ponder about those souls waiting in silence in bureaucratic queues. The veils of identity are quick and fungible. The consequences are a differe...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Robyn added it · review of another edition

An incredibly detailed, background-heavy tale about a mixed-race boy born in India at the turn of the 20th century, “The Impressionist” is Hari Kunzru’s reverse take on Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”. Pran Nath’s privileged life is abruptly brought to an end when a servant reveals his true origins; his father, far from the affluent Indian money-lender who has brought him up, was in fact a deceased English traveller whose path crossed that of Pran’s long-dead mother some 15 years previously. Cast uncere...more An incredibly detailed, background-heavy tale about a mixed-race boy born in India at the turn of the 20th century, “The Impressionist” is Hari Kunzru’s reverse take on Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”. Pran Nath’s privileged life is abruptly brought to an end when a servant reveals his true origins; his father, far from the affluent Indian money-lender who has brought him up, was in fact a deceased English traveller whose path crossed that of Pran’s long-dead mother some 15 years previously. Cast unceremoniously into the street, Pran is forced to survive in any way he can, whilst attempting to discover who he is and where he rightfully belongs.

Covering a wide range of locations, from Agra to London, Bombay to the British countryside, “The Impressionist” is a deliciously rich taste of early 20th century life and all the contradictions it embodied. Pran swings from high-caste Indian boy, through street dweller to middle-class Englishman, each incarnation no more comfortable or less wrought with difficulties than the last. With remarkable ease, one story blends into the next, Pran’s transformations unquestionably believable. Kunzru’s talent is at its most effective when describing the new surroundings in which Pran finds himself, as well as managing to inspire sympathy and understanding in the reader for a boy who is not at all likeable, superficially or otherwise.

Some points are rammed home with somewhat less subtlety than is perhaps intended; those who are inflicted with the disease named religion come off rather badly, as does anyone in a position of power. In fact, most of the characters are essentially unpleasant, or at least enormously flawed, although Kunrzru does his best to get us on their sides with a plethora of background information for certain cherry-picked individuals. It is these sub-plots which make up the real heart of the novel.

Skin colour is, of course, vital to the piece, but in itself doesn’t form the crux of the story, with Kunzru providing representatives of the good, the bad and the ugly from every race throughout Pran’s meandering journey. Instead, it is the more abstract concept of fitting in, placement and acceptability which drives the story forwards. Even this, though explored to its furthest regions, is never quite brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Some characters, like Paul Goertler the Jew, are voluntary outsiders; others find themselves deliberately shunned or accidentally sidelined due to circumstance or accident. Despite this, the reader still wonders: is it necessary for everybody to be an impressionist in order to find their place in society? Or is this inescapably purgatorial existence solely the lot of Pran and his fellow mixed-race orphans?

“The Impressionist” gives us a fascinating insight into the colour-coded world of the first quarter of the 20th century. It details the understandably fraught relationship between England and India, and the romanticised attitudes held towards each other from both sides. Kunzru's simultaneous love and exasperation for both India and Britain is tangible and it is this passion and honesty which lays such a solid foundation for what is ultimately a collection of individual yet well-linked, beautifully detailed stories.(less)

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Jun 09, 2011 Jeruen Dery rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the third novel of Hari Kunzru that I have read. However, I did not read them in chronological order. I first read Transmission a couple of years ago, and this was about the ups and downs of an Indian worker here in the United States who due to some obsession of his, created a virus that plagued the whole word, while working for Google. The second book I read, which was Kunzru’s third novel, is My Revolutions, and this was about a group of young English people who were rebelling against...more This is the third novel of Hari Kunzru that I have read. However, I did not read them in chronological order. I first read Transmission a couple of years ago, and this was about the ups and downs of an Indian worker here in the United States who due to some obsession of his, created a virus that plagued the whole word, while working for Google. The second book I read, which was Kunzru’s third novel, is My Revolutions, and this was about a group of young English people who were rebelling against the English society. The Impressionist on the other hand was Kunzru’s debut novel. And since I liked the other two novels that he wrote so far, I figured it wouldn’t hurt reading this one as well.

Somehow, I feel ambivalent with this novel. This is like a sweet and sour experience. As is the case with modern English literature, there is a dry witty humor to this one. But somehow, I had the feeling that it failed to deliver the goods.

The story revolves around a half-English, half-Indian child, who is the illegitimate son of an English explorer, and an Indian girl who happened to be both hiding in a cave during a flood. They had sex, but unfortunately, the English explorer died afterward due to the floodwaters. The Indian girl was then married to some Indian guy, and the boy was thought to be their child, but there was a servant who exposed the whole scheme and revealed the boy to be a bastard.

That set off the boy’s adventures. The boy went to a hijra house, and was first groomed to be a male prostitute for English colonialists. Then, he became the servant of a missionary couple and their mission. He learned to blend in, he learned to disguise his Indianness, and when the right time came, he was able to steal the identity of one drunk boy on his way to England, and because of that, he morphed into a new character. This continued on until the very end of the book, where his newest character was on Saharan camel rider, complete with tattoos and a turban.

Now what do I not like about this book? Well, I had the impression that it attempted to be a frame narrative. This reminded me of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, where each chapter was basically a story of its own, and then the whole novel is built up by combining each of these smaller stories. The Impressionist seems to be like this as well, except that it seems half-baked. Yes, Kunzru goes into detail about the history of the character’s first adoptive father, and how he was struck with Spanish influenza even though he had a rather peculiar fear of germs. Kunzru also went into detail with respect to the history of Elspeth Macfarlane, the adoptive mother that the character had, while in India in a Christian mission. There are these tangents but they seem to be not too short, and not too long as well. It felt like it was there but of no particular purpose. It does add background to the story, but if that was the purpose, then it was a little prolonged.

The thing that was great about the novel however, was the use of the anti-hero as a plot element. The main character wasn’t someone that the reader could easily sympathize with. After all, he was stealing people’s identities and doing malefactive things with them. However, this trick works, as can be attested by the series of novels beginning with The Talented Mr. Ripley. In The Impressionist, the anti-hero isn’t so violent as Mr. Ripley, in the sense that he doesn’t commit murder left and right, but instead, it seems that he was just in the right location at the right time.

So overall, I still think that I am glad that I read this novel. I just cannot totally be upfront and recommend it with no question. I would give it 3.5 stars out of 5, and would only recommend it if one is indeed a big fan of British literature.(less)

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Feb 12, 2010 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very fun to read, thought-provoking, and interesting.

The protagonist of the book is genetically half British and half Indian. Pale skinned and growing up in India during the latter days of British rule, we get to follow him through a whirl of interesting people, locations, and experiences.

Skin color is a recurring, important, and (to be honest) often upsetting theme in the book. There's a lot of racism. Kunzru is willing to deeply examine what a lot of other authors gloss over or over-simplify....more

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Feb 28, 2012 Evelina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hari Kunzru ir sarakstījis aizraujošu stāstu „Impresionists”, kas ir ļoti populārs, jo ir tulkots vairākās valodās un saņēmis prestižas balvas. Tajā ir stāstīts par kāda jaunekļa dzīvi, kurā viņam nākas mainīties.
Šajā stāstā galvenais varonis iet savu dzīves ceļu. Viņš no bagāta puisēna, šokējošu iemeslu dēļ, kļūst par nabagu un veido dzīvi no jauna, tādu kāda viņam nebūtu ienākusi prātā, guļot zvilnī uz savrupmājas jumta. Viņš dažādu iemeslu dēļ mainīja savu dzīvesvietu un vārdu. Galvenais varo...more

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Aug 27, 2009 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book, and for the first half of it, I did. But when a book is as centered around one character as this one is (despite the author thinking you need to know the full history of every person he crosses paths with, which I found unnecessary and distracting), the character can't just be interesting. I need more than that, and this book just didn't deliver. While the concept of the character was interesting, it went no deeper than a concept - the Impressionist, who puts on lives...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In his impressive and successful novel, Hari Kunzru explores the nature of identity. For some people a sense of belonging is very strong, whereas for others such feelings are mere illusion. The former group may cite social group, language, culture or religion as evidence of their stance, while the latter group, perhaps, may cite exactly the same subject matter to prove the opposite. The more politically inclined may even cite our relationship to the means of production as the primary source or p...more In his impressive and successful novel, Hari Kunzru explores the nature of identity. For some people a sense of belonging is very strong, whereas for others such feelings are mere illusion. The former group may cite social group, language, culture or religion as evidence of their stance, while the latter group, perhaps, may cite exactly the same subject matter to prove the opposite. The more politically inclined may even cite our relationship to the means of production as the primary source or personal and social identity. In that case, the way that we make our living provides much of what we perceive as identity, and, in Hari Kunzru’s book, The Impressionist works through several quite different lives.

It’s not that The Impressionist, the principal character of Hari Kunzru’s novel, has no identity. Indeed, The Impressionist has a whole host of them, and all of them are both complex and, at the same time, completely credible. It is those around him who endow him with the trappings that confirm who he is. And he, of course, responds, donning new lives according to each new coat he wears.

The book’s style seems to owe much to the magical realism of Salman Rushdie. There is also a superficial similarity of subject matter, since The Impressionist begins in colonial India where we witness our hero’s chance conception. There are royal parlours, low-life slums and chance encounter. We see the inside of an English public school, a prestigious university and eventually travel to Africa in a professional but doomed role. And throughout, The Impressionist seems to do no more than merely fit into the niches that have apparently been prepared for him. Everything he tries on fits him well.

So, as we follow The Impressionist on his personal travels through multiple identities, we are challenged by the transformations. They are opened up by chance encounters, but yet they also seem inevitable. We are thus encouraged to look at our own lives and ask how many times we might have changed our own spots. A reader with a strong sense of identity might find such a challenge quite threatening. But then it’s just a story, isn’t it?(less)

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Mar 01, 2010 Ruth Seeley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The British Raj era has been thoroughly explored by J.G. Farrell (The Siege of Krishnapur), E.M. Forster (A Passage to India), and by Paul Scott in his quartet of novels beginning with The Jewel in the Crown. It's rare for an author of historical fiction to explore this era, as it's been so thoroughly documented.

But the historical fiction is merely a device Kunzru uses in this spectacular first novel to explore what happens when the trappings of family, status, caste, and gender are abruptly rem...more

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Mar 10, 2012 Rasma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What I don't understand is how the blurbs on the cover can say things like "funny" and "exhilarating". I agree with "brilliant" but would add that if you, like me, are yourself a half-caste offspring of the Raj then prepare to despair. The last few chapters which portray what really happens when the colonialists come to town ought to be obligatory reading for all politicians, diplomats and cultural anthropologists. Oh yeah, and missionaries.

Just when you thought the multicultural world had a fu...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Pamela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Impressionist was written very well in parts, and in others, poorly. If you can get past those parts, then you can view the novel, on whole, as interesting.

I started off disliking the character, but then you end up liking him by the end of the first part of the book. You feel sorry for him and his life evolves. The second and third part of the book are hard to get through, but after that the story moves on more congruently and smoothly.

The ending was a bit perplexing, and I feel like the rel...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not sure how I heard about this book, but I'm glad I did. Such a wonderfully told story of a mixed race (Indian/English) boy-then-man during the British Raj. After getting chucked out of his Indian "father's" house as a young teen when his true paternity is revealed (but not exactly to him), the main character. whose name changes are the chapter titles, struggles first to survive and then to fit in somehow, somewhere, preferably in the dominant culture. Whatever that is. Appearances are deceivin...more

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Aug 13, 2009 Anwar is currently reading it · review of another edition

I'm sort of "currently" reading this, in the sense that I started reading this in 2003 or something, and the story is really interesting, and gets only more and more interesting toward the end. But, at that time I had to focus on my study, so I couldn't finish it; I have about 100 pages left to read and still haven't finished it. One thing I want to share is that this book is comprehensively written, in the sense that the writes literally spends pages to describe for example one setting, or whil...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Liviu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mainstream, read_2012, aq_more_favorites

another winner from H. Kunzru at least in the first 50 or so pages; should finish it this year; read more and now around page 200 and the book is indeed funny, sad, dark, ironic... the picaresque adventures of Pran aka Clive aka Chandra aka Robert; a magisterial skewering of the Raj, the scenes at the Nawab court are a must read for anyone still believing in the Kipling fairy tales

(it is 1914-15 and the childless/impotent but very traditional Nawab wants to adopt a young cousin rather than leave...more another winner from H. Kunzru at least in the first 50 or so pages; should finish it this year; read more and now around page 200 and the book is indeed funny, sad, dark, ironic... the picaresque adventures of Pran aka Clive aka Chandra aka Robert; a magisterial skewering of the Raj, the scenes at the Nawab court are a must read for anyone still believing in the Kipling fairy tales

(it is 1914-15 and the childless/impotent but very traditional Nawab wants to adopt a young cousin rather than leave the state to his Westernized, porn and party loving brother - who just has as guest a famed City of Angels porn producer in addition to other decadence - but the local English biggie whose approval is needed for that tends to favor the brother who promised to allow factories and all the new Western stuff in the province; on the other hand despite his self-loathing love for young boys, the English officer is very traditionalist himself and kind of detests the younger prince for his decadence so both the Nawab and the prince try to get compromising film of the Major with a young boy, the Nawab candidate being Pran renamed Clive by the Major who actually starts taking a shine to him more like a son and start educating him as white, while the prince's candidate is a dubious knife wielding Portuguese who sees Pran/Clive as a threat to be removed by force; and then the bigger English boss comes to visit and a tiger hunt is "prepared"...)

Finished the novel and indeed it was another very high quality book - 3rd in a row recent for me and also 3rd read from the author; after the part described above there are two more parts in which our hero changes his name and his station in life as well as living in quite different cultures with quite different expectations.

Cannot emphasize both how good this book is and what a great refreshing change it makes to see the world and events from a very different perspective.

After this I have to say that I will follow whatever Harry Kunzru writes with the greatest interest(less)

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Jun 23, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Those Who Feel No Need to Have a Sympathetic Protagonist

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, literary-fiction, novels, ultimate-reading-list

The flyleaf describes this as a "picaresque" tale. It's the story of Pran Nath, who grows up as a privileged, rich Brahman in the India of the Raj. When we first meet him at fifteen years old in 1918, he's contemplating rape: Somehow looking is no longer enough... He could grab her, and pull her down on the bolsters. There would be a fuss, of course, but his father could smooth it over. She is only a servant, after all.

And there I think is my core problem with this book. Style-wise this is well-...more

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Apr 24, 2007 Kristina added it · review of another edition

Shelves: started-reading-put-it-down

...yeah I don't know. This book came along at the same time as White Teeth, and suffered for it.

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Jan 08, 2011 Noel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sorry to have kept this so long but there was a death in the family in May which involved a trip to South America, and life if just now getting back to normal.

This was a mixed bag for me. I ultimately thought that he worked well with the questions of identity and racial discrimination especially with regards to the children who were of mixed race and rejected by both sides. I felt though that the book was slow, overambitious and that it took off on too many tangents, which made it a bit of a slo...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Marcelo rated it 4 of 5 stars

A sprawling episodic novel of a man that takes on a series of new identities after being cast out by his family, it's hard to believe this is a first novel. There's so much invention and craft in this book to fill three or four novels. If it feels a bit open ended, after its character having taking a 360 degree turn through colonial assimilation and back, well - I guess that's a bit like the cultural experience of assimilation itself. The early parts in India and the episodes in Fatehpur are the...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Kyra rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read, and definitely the best book I have read in the last year.
If you wanted a great book club selection, or just a novel to pick to pieces with a friend, this is it. Beautifully written, suspenseful, and intriguing, this novel raises a thousand questions about who you are, what defines you as a person, and why the Brits are so weird. I loved it and only wish that the used copy I scored in Goodwill (!) was not so tattered, because The Impress...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Sundarraj Kaushik rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book is about an Anglo Indian who happens to be brought up in a rich orthodox Kashmiri Pandit family. He turns out to be a brat.
He loses his hypochondriac father. His father had ensured that he had a sheltered and pampered life. After his death he finds himself on the streets with nowhere to go.

He finds that himself changing identities as often as one changes one's wardrobe. His travels and travails, take him through Agra, Bombay and London. Each time his identity changes and life undergoes...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Anna Jones rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Felt a little disappointed by the ending, when I first started reading this book I thought it was a novel based on an actual impressionist, similar to Pan Yuliang's fictionalized portrayal in "The Painter from Shanghai". But the book doesn't go into the protagonist's artistic life at all, and I kept rereading the last few paragraphs wondering why Kunzru would have gone with the title he did, since it seems to have nothing really to do with the book. As a story, however, it was a very engrossing...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Madeleine Decker rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, india, uk

Conceived during a freak flood in the middle of the desert, privilege young Pran is seen growing up in a rich family in Agra. After being kicked out for being a total spoiled ass, he ends up in a palace looking like a hysterical large pink iced cake, in a Scottish Mission in a Bombay slum, in Oxford and ends up in the middle of nowhere.

To survive he alternatively shifts from a rich Indian boy to a lower than nothing one, a male slave prostitute disguised as a woman, a servant coupled with a half...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having looked through other reviews, I really don't have anything valuable to add. The main character, Pran, begins his life in a family of privilege. He loses this place when his father finds out that Pran was actually fathered by a British man, and he is left penniless and needing to find a way to support himself. The book follows Pran as he takes on the identity of multiple personalities/roles in an effort to survive (thrive?), first in India and then England.

I DO think this is an incredibly...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Sarah Cypher rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This book was recommended to me by a well-traveled, foreign-policy-savvy author friend of mine, and I found it to be one of my favorite books this year. It's a smart, wry, vivid, take on the hero's journey, where the hero is a fair-skinned Indian who seeks to pass as an Englishman during the Raj era.

The way the narrator follows the nameless (or rather, many-named) protagonist reminded me of Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, in that he's somewhat of a tabula rasa, an observer of...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Shaz S rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

Blurb on the back: Fathered, through circuitous circumstances, by an Englishman, Pran Nath Razdan, the boy who will become the Impressionist, was passed off by his Indian mother as the child of her husband, a wealthy man of high caste. Growing up spoiled in a life of luxury just downriver from the Taj Mahal, at fifteen the news of Pran's true parentage is revealed to his father and he is tossed out into the street -- a pariah and an outcast. Thus begins an extraordinary, near mythical journey of...more Blurb on the back: Fathered, through circuitous circumstances, by an Englishman, Pran Nath Razdan, the boy who will become the Impressionist, was passed off by his Indian mother as the child of her husband, a wealthy man of high caste. Growing up spoiled in a life of luxury just downriver from the Taj Mahal, at fifteen the news of Pran's true parentage is revealed to his father and he is tossed out into the street -- a pariah and an outcast. Thus begins an extraordinary, near mythical journey of a young man who must re-invent himself to survive -- not once, but many times.

Imprisoned by a brothel and dressed in women's clothes, his sensuous beauty is exploited as he is made to become Rukhsana, a pawn in a game between colony and empire. To a depraved British major he becomes Clive, an object of desire taught to be a model English schoolboy. Escaping to Bombay he begins a double life as Robert, dutiful foster child to a Scottish missionary couple, and as Pretty Bobby, errand boy and sometime pimp to the tawdry women of the city's most notorious district.

But as political unrest begins to stir, Pran finds himself in the company of a doomed young Englishman -- an orphan named Jonathan Bridgeman. Having learned quickly that perception is a ready replacement for reality, Pran soon finds himself on a boat bound for Southampton where, with Bridgeman's passport, he will begin again. First in London, then at Oxford, the Impressionist hones his chameleon-like skills, making himself whoever and whatever he needs to be to obtain what he desires.

From Victorian India to Edwardian London, from an expatriate community of black Americans in Paris to a hopeless expedition to study a lost tribe of Africa, Hari Kunzru's unforgettable novel dazzles with its artistry and wit while it challenges with its insights into what it means to be Indian or English, black or white, and every degree that lies between them.

My Thoughts: I tried really hard to like this book, I really did. It had all the elements for what makes a book delightful to me but somehow the whole was less than the sum of the parts. The book is broadly overwritten, which can be a good thing but in Kunzru's case it's just oversimplification to the extreme. He has dumb-downed the subject matter to such a point that at one point I reckon he was just explaining tennis shoes to the readers. With better editing, the book could have been a lot crispier. And in the first and second chapters why are some Hindi words italised and not the others?

I like the anti-hero, the protagonist in all his different avatars. I can empathize with him in his search for a quintessential identity and a sense of belonging. I like how quickly he acclimatizes to his new lives as the book progresses without any hint of his former selves. His "adventures" though seem forced and too well orchestrated. I liked reading the first half of the book because it is full of little tidbits from the British Raj and life in a royal court during that era. The ending was a little open-ended for me, I'm afraid. I guess I was looking for a complete closure to the book and to Pran's problems but may be the author had a sequel in mind which he never got around to work on again.

(less)

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Dec 21, 2011 Melissa Conner rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For the first fifteen years of his life, Pran Nath Razdan enjoyed a life of luxury. Living just down the river from the Taj Mahal and being worshipped as one of the most beautiful boys in India, he was able to do pretty much anything he wanted. That was, of course, until word began to spread about his true parentage…namely his father…his common, low-life English father. Suddenly the life he had known is taken from him as this “result of a one night stand” is cast out onto the street to fend for...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Elaine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes a good long read

This is a wonderfully written read about a boy's quest to find an identity, and the irony of his fate after he settles on one. It is Dickensian in its tale of a poor boy who has fallen from grace and must survive by his own wits and ability to charm, combined with a willingness to endure what he must to get along and get ahead. Like Dickens, Kunzru's plot depends on coincidence, but no such far-fetched ones as, say, David Copperfield. There will be no aristocratic far-flung or far-fetched savior...more

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Jan 19, 2008 Colette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those interested in the British Raj or the issue of identity

Recommended to Colette by: Can't remember who gave it to me!

This was like a few short books in one, set in different parts of India and in England. It concerns the issue of identity, how and why it can shift, whether one can truly shape it as one wills. More concretely, it concerns the protagonist's shifting identity as a person of mixed Indian and English blood.

I liked Kunzru's attention to detail, his use of the parenthetical, and his ability to quickly paint a character or a caricature.

There were a few instances in which my support for the protagoni...more This was like a few short books in one, set in different parts of India and in England. It concerns the issue of identity, how and why it can shift, whether one can truly shape it as one wills. More concretely, it concerns the protagonist's shifting identity as a person of mixed Indian and English blood.

I liked Kunzru's attention to detail, his use of the parenthetical, and his ability to quickly paint a character or a caricature.

There were a few instances in which my support for the protagonist wavered, and I actually didn't like the ending, but it was a very enjoyable read. I found myself regularly wanting to read parts of it out loud to someone.

What I learned:
What a topi is
The position of Anglo-Indians in the British Raj
That the struggle for Indian independence was bloodier for a lot longer than one would think from seeing the movie "Ghandi"

The first paragraph:
"One afternoon, three years after the beginning of the new century, red dust that was once rich mountain soil quivers in the air. It falls on a rider who is making slow progress through the ravines that score the plains south of the mountains, drying his throat, filming his clothes, clogging the pores of his pink perspiring English face."

My favorite passage:
"Then Jonathan realizes, with a joyous flood of relief, that whatever else she is (and several of the possibilities worry him) she is certainly quite mad. Maybe this is the kind of conclusion that inevitably shows on the face of the concluder. Maybe Aunt Berthilda is merely perceptive. Either way, something about Jonathan suddenly reveals itself to her in an unfavorable light.
"Even as she is attacking him he cannot quite stop grinning. She is mad and he is safe! Scratch on, Berthilda! Berthilda, wail away! She screeches at him incoherently, bringing masters and boys running over the lawn as her surprisingly strong fingers pluck at his face and her stiff skirts snag on his uniform, making a sound like radio static. As two of the rugby masters escort her off the premises she shouts back insults, choosing, in one of those moments of insight that come with being mad, to scream 'He's no kin to me! He's not my blood!'"

Another good snippet:
"Noble adopts an expression that, were there a Gentleman's Guide to Correct Facial Expressions, would illustrate the entry for 'Askance.'"

There are a few scenes depicting or referring to forced sex, so I'm kind of relieved my mother didn't end up borrowing it after Christmas. (less)

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Aug 06, 2011 Alan added it

A young boy, product of a transient encounter between an Englishman, saved temporarily from a monsoon flood, and a Brahmin orphan being transported to her wedding, is thrown out by his high caste family when the truth of his conception becomes known. This is the story of his rise from the whore houses of Agra to Oxford as he dons one personna after another. The question is whether there is anyone really there under all of his masks. Very interesting.

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Feb 12, 2011 Scott Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fantastic book. One of those I would not recommend to my mother, it is pretty up front with it's sexuality and language and, shall we say, adult themes. But very smart and very thought provoking story about a kid from India during the day of the British Raj who learns to pass himself off as British and reinvents himself in order to survive until he completely looses sense of himself. Very depressing but very worthwhile. Not perfect, but I haven't been so impacted by a novel this new for a while.

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Aug 07, 2011 Darcie Rowe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When the spoiled protagonist's half-blooded ancestry is discovered, he is kicked out of his home, and is forced to change his persona several times in order to survive as he grows into a young adult. He evolves from a child prostitute into a pimp into an Oxford-educated Englishman. This was a very well-written book, except for the ending which confused and disappointed me.

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About Hari Kunzru

Hari Mohan Nath Kunzru (born 1969) is a British novelist and journalist, author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission and My Revolutions. Of mixed English and Kashmiri Pandit ancestry, he grew up in Essex. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford University, then gained an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He li...more

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Trivia About The Impressionist

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Quotes from The Impressionist

“Duhovna sloboda sveta direktno zavisi od politicke slobode Indije. Molimo Vas da stavite nesto sitinine u kasu.

Posle tri cetvrti sata gubi svaku sigurnost, posle sat i po, sasvim je rastrojen. I dok prodju dva sata straze, njegove granice su se savsim istopile i on je potpuno izgubljen, ili mozda ne toliko izgubljen koliko razasut svuda po tami, okretanje njegovog sveta ima iznenadne zastoje i sada uopste nije siguran ni ko je, ni sta je, ni gde je ili cak da li uopste ima pravo da naziva sebe on.

Dzonatan je naucio trik. Ljudi mare samo za spoljasnji izgled: sirinu manzetne, izgovor dentalno-labijalnog frikativa V. Da bi postao neko drugi treba samo da promenis krojaca i zapamtis da moras da dodirujes donjom usnom ivicu gornjih zuba. Lako je. Ali ako se promena lika ne desava spontano, onda noge gube oslonac i hvata te panika i onda nista ne moze zaustaviti pad. Onda je promena lika beg, onda je to trcanje uz saznanje da zaustavljanje moze izazvati sumnju da ustvari niko i ne trci. Niko ne trci. Niko se ne zaustavlja. Tu uopste i nema nikoga.

Kako se coveculjak okrece, tako se pojavljuju razne licnosti jedna za drugom. Svaka pojava traje samo nekoliko sekundi, najvise minut. Svaka brise onu prethodnu. Ovaj covek postaje neko drugi tako potpuno da se nista od njegove sopstvene licnosti ne moze prepoznati. Izmedju svaka dva utiska koja coveculjak stvara, u trenutku dok jedna osoba odlazi, a druga jos nije stupila na njeno mesto, coveculjak, imitator-impresionista, sasvim je bezlican, potpuno prazan. On je niko.” — 1 person liked it

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