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Baumgartner's Bombay
A "beautifully written, richly textured, and haunting story" (Chaim Potok), BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany -- and his Jewish heritage -- for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny" (NEW LEADER), Desai's "capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion" (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their full height.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 4, 1989
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1248 people want to read
About the author
Anita Desai
81 books905 followersAnita Desai was born in 1937. Her published works include adult novels, children's books and short stories. She is a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Delhi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. Anita Mazumdar Desai is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, is the winner of the 2006 Booker prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
July 3, 2021
This is not a typical Desai novel, as its central character Hugo is a German Jew, and quite a large part of the book is set in Europe.
Hugo has grown up in Berlin as the son of a fairly prosperous furniture dealer, in the 1920s and witnessed the gradual loss of the world he knows, escaping just in time having been promised a job working for a timber merchant in Calcutta.
His next misfortune is to be interned as a German for the duration of the war, and although his fresh start in Bombay seems to be going well, his prospects are derailed when his employer dies, leaving him to live on his savings in a flat full of rescued cats, his only companion being the fellow German Lotte, an alcoholic former dancer who he knew in Calcutta.
So on the surface this is a pretty gloomy story, but it is partially rescued by the liveliness of Desai's descriptive imagination. However I would not recommend it as a starting point for anyone who has never read Desai - Clear Light of Day and Fasting, Feasting are much better.
Hugo has grown up in Berlin as the son of a fairly prosperous furniture dealer, in the 1920s and witnessed the gradual loss of the world he knows, escaping just in time having been promised a job working for a timber merchant in Calcutta.
His next misfortune is to be interned as a German for the duration of the war, and although his fresh start in Bombay seems to be going well, his prospects are derailed when his employer dies, leaving him to live on his savings in a flat full of rescued cats, his only companion being the fellow German Lotte, an alcoholic former dancer who he knew in Calcutta.
So on the surface this is a pretty gloomy story, but it is partially rescued by the liveliness of Desai's descriptive imagination. However I would not recommend it as a starting point for anyone who has never read Desai - Clear Light of Day and Fasting, Feasting are much better.
February 17, 2017
In the last one month I have read three books by Anita Desai, but this is only my first review out of the three. The reason behind it is that Anita Desai’s writing always leaves me with a feeling of awe towards the author. Her language and her writing style is unparalleled in her genre and I feel extremely under qualified to review her works. So instead of making this a proper review, I am going to merely state my feelings from reading this book.
Baumgartner’s Bombay is the story of one Hugo Baumgartner and his life during the World War II. Hugo had the misfortune to be born into a Jewish family during the time of The Holocaust. When his father’s furniture shop was ransacked and he was taken to a concentration camp, Hugo’ mother sent him off to Calcutta with the hope of a better future for her son before going into hiding. But Hugo arrived at Calcutta only to be imprisoned for a long period. Once freed, he moves to Bombay where he rekindles his acquaintance with Lotte and makes a few new acquaintances too. But even then he remains a loner for most part as his true companions were not human, but cats for whom he used to bring scrap food.
Starting with a murder at the beginning, Anita Desai continues to tell Baumgartner’s story by tying up the present with the past. Hugo Baumgartner at a glance seems to be an extremely plain person with no strong personality. As the story progresses, we realize that there’s more to depth to Hugo’s character than we had initially thought. The loner’s need for relationship/companionship is reflected in his apparent affection for the cats. His life from the time of The Holocaust and the following experiences were responsible for shaping up his life and his personality. I found Lotte’s character to be a sharp contrast to Hugo. She had a certain belligerent persona that made her stand apart from Hugo.
The ending was just perfect for how the story had been shaping up. The novel takes us on a ride to discover the importance of relationships, friendships and explore the feelings of loss and solitude. The best part of the story is the author’s narrative style and her elegant writing style which has the quality to grasp the reader unawares and not let go. It simply compels you to delve further and further into the character’s lives and feel their emotions in person.
Awesome book and I recommend it to the people who are interested in reading quality fiction with some depth.
Baumgartner’s Bombay is the story of one Hugo Baumgartner and his life during the World War II. Hugo had the misfortune to be born into a Jewish family during the time of The Holocaust. When his father’s furniture shop was ransacked and he was taken to a concentration camp, Hugo’ mother sent him off to Calcutta with the hope of a better future for her son before going into hiding. But Hugo arrived at Calcutta only to be imprisoned for a long period. Once freed, he moves to Bombay where he rekindles his acquaintance with Lotte and makes a few new acquaintances too. But even then he remains a loner for most part as his true companions were not human, but cats for whom he used to bring scrap food.
Starting with a murder at the beginning, Anita Desai continues to tell Baumgartner’s story by tying up the present with the past. Hugo Baumgartner at a glance seems to be an extremely plain person with no strong personality. As the story progresses, we realize that there’s more to depth to Hugo’s character than we had initially thought. The loner’s need for relationship/companionship is reflected in his apparent affection for the cats. His life from the time of The Holocaust and the following experiences were responsible for shaping up his life and his personality. I found Lotte’s character to be a sharp contrast to Hugo. She had a certain belligerent persona that made her stand apart from Hugo.
The ending was just perfect for how the story had been shaping up. The novel takes us on a ride to discover the importance of relationships, friendships and explore the feelings of loss and solitude. The best part of the story is the author’s narrative style and her elegant writing style which has the quality to grasp the reader unawares and not let go. It simply compels you to delve further and further into the character’s lives and feel their emotions in person.
Awesome book and I recommend it to the people who are interested in reading quality fiction with some depth.
November 18, 2015
This book was very upsetting, but I am glad I read it anyway. Not sure why I should be glad I read it, given that it is pretty traumatic from beginning to end. I think part of what makes it interesting is the low-key way in which the horrible events unfold, with intervals of happier aspects of life bobbing about in the sea of woes. Lots of great characters, and the focus on the oddball title character allows us to see great world events unfold from a unique perspective. Highly recommended, as long as you have more detachment from fictional characters than I do.
April 26, 2019
Now that I have read it, I seem to have forgotten why I wanted to read it in the first place. Awfully slow and thus painful.
March 31, 2013
Hugo Baumgartner, the son of a Jewish merchant, was born and raised in Berlin. They lived in affluence as his father's trade was booming. Then the unthinkable Holocaust happens forcing them to lose all their properties during which his father dies. The entire property of his father was slowly seized by his dad's business associate (they addressed him the 'Gentleman from Hamburg') who, posing as if helping the family in grief, somehow manages to beguile and gulp the whole fortune to himself. He tells Hugo to go to India, as Germany is no more safe for Jews, and that he would put a word about him to his business partner in India (he has contacts). Hugo decides to go and live in India whereas his fragile mother refuses to come to "the land of snakes and beggars." So, he set out for himself and plans of returning once things were normal in Germany, as the 'Gentleman from Hamburg' assures that he would take care of Hugo's mother.
Hugo goes to India and lands in Calcutta. It was the time when Germany and England locks horns (WWII). Hugo was arrested and sent to a concentration camp being mistaken to be a Nazi, wherein his repeated attempts to prove that he was but a Jew born and brought up in Berlin, came to naught. He accepts the fate and starts to enjoy the routine life in the camp for 6 years. In all this time, he had been writing letters to his mother, and received no reply. He was afraid that perchance his mother would have been caught by the Nazis.
After he was released from the camp, he goes to meet the person he was supposed to meet in India: Mr. Habibullah. Unfortunately, the latter was broke and was in a situation where he was forced to leave Calcutta for Dacca because of the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Bengal back then. Mr. Habibullah advices Baumgartner to go to Bombay and meet Mr. Chimanlal. In a riot, it appeared that Habibullah's shop was looted and he was possibly killed. So, Hugo leaves for Bombay, meets the generous and kind Chimanlal who helps Hugo much. With Chimanlal, Hugo forms somehow a deeper relationship than that of employee-employer, and accompanies the former in his horse race moments, which obviously is considered bad by the former's family. So, whatever silver cups they won together by betting, Chimanlal gave Hugo to keep and that someday they would share it. In the meantime, Chimanlal dies and his son takes over his business, thus forcing Hugo jobless because Hugo has had no bonding and business papers with Chimanlal.
He resorts to live secludedly with stray cats in Bombay. His only companion was a fellow "coarse German" named Lotte who was once a bar dancer.
One day Baumgartner takes a drugged foreigner to his home because the latter happened to be penniless to pay the bill for what he had eaten and refused to move out of Café de Paris, the restaurant to which Hugo was a regular customer. The restauranteur had pleaded Hugo to go and speak to the homeless "firinghi" and ask him to get out. Hugo was in a constrain because it is only this restuarant that provides leftover food and milk for his cats for free everyday. So, he spoke to the guy in German. As the latter refused, Hugo, in the spur of the moment, offers to take the homeless to his home.
This man, wild and dominant in nature, comes to Hugo's home and eyes the silver cups. What happened then is the closing scene.
The final chapter of the novel is meticulously written. Human emotions during panic, and confusion, especially in a city like Bombay, was so neatly pictured. The whole story was deeply soaked in humanity, the hidden devils and gods within. It is about alienation, abject condition, perspective of people, hapless nature of a common man. There were Historical references to World War II and its consequences; that how it affected the lives of ordinary, powerless people.
It is interesting and astonishing to note that you can forge a wonderful fiction out of a failure; a total nobody, in contrast to the well-equipped, or clever, or intrepid and adventurous, or charming type of protagonists whom we are so accustomed as well as bored of seeing.
A lovely, lovely read.
Hugo goes to India and lands in Calcutta. It was the time when Germany and England locks horns (WWII). Hugo was arrested and sent to a concentration camp being mistaken to be a Nazi, wherein his repeated attempts to prove that he was but a Jew born and brought up in Berlin, came to naught. He accepts the fate and starts to enjoy the routine life in the camp for 6 years. In all this time, he had been writing letters to his mother, and received no reply. He was afraid that perchance his mother would have been caught by the Nazis.
After he was released from the camp, he goes to meet the person he was supposed to meet in India: Mr. Habibullah. Unfortunately, the latter was broke and was in a situation where he was forced to leave Calcutta for Dacca because of the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Bengal back then. Mr. Habibullah advices Baumgartner to go to Bombay and meet Mr. Chimanlal. In a riot, it appeared that Habibullah's shop was looted and he was possibly killed. So, Hugo leaves for Bombay, meets the generous and kind Chimanlal who helps Hugo much. With Chimanlal, Hugo forms somehow a deeper relationship than that of employee-employer, and accompanies the former in his horse race moments, which obviously is considered bad by the former's family. So, whatever silver cups they won together by betting, Chimanlal gave Hugo to keep and that someday they would share it. In the meantime, Chimanlal dies and his son takes over his business, thus forcing Hugo jobless because Hugo has had no bonding and business papers with Chimanlal.
He resorts to live secludedly with stray cats in Bombay. His only companion was a fellow "coarse German" named Lotte who was once a bar dancer.
One day Baumgartner takes a drugged foreigner to his home because the latter happened to be penniless to pay the bill for what he had eaten and refused to move out of Café de Paris, the restaurant to which Hugo was a regular customer. The restauranteur had pleaded Hugo to go and speak to the homeless "firinghi" and ask him to get out. Hugo was in a constrain because it is only this restuarant that provides leftover food and milk for his cats for free everyday. So, he spoke to the guy in German. As the latter refused, Hugo, in the spur of the moment, offers to take the homeless to his home.
This man, wild and dominant in nature, comes to Hugo's home and eyes the silver cups. What happened then is the closing scene.
The final chapter of the novel is meticulously written. Human emotions during panic, and confusion, especially in a city like Bombay, was so neatly pictured. The whole story was deeply soaked in humanity, the hidden devils and gods within. It is about alienation, abject condition, perspective of people, hapless nature of a common man. There were Historical references to World War II and its consequences; that how it affected the lives of ordinary, powerless people.
It is interesting and astonishing to note that you can forge a wonderful fiction out of a failure; a total nobody, in contrast to the well-equipped, or clever, or intrepid and adventurous, or charming type of protagonists whom we are so accustomed as well as bored of seeing.
A lovely, lovely read.
April 27, 2016
Baumgartner is a German Jew growing up in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s. But wait: this is not – not exactly, not quite – a novel about the Holocaust. Instead Baumgartner leaves Germany before things get too bad, and takes a job in Calcutta. Eventually 1947 approaches, and in the riots and violence that led up to Partition, he leaves Calcutta too, ending up in Bombay.
This is not a novel about either of those tragedies. Instead it's a novel about a man who is forever isolated, forever an outsider, cut off from the community that even tragedy, at least, would engender. In Berlin he is not a German because he's a Jew. In Calcutta during WWII (still a British colony then, remember) he is considered an foreign national due to his German citizenship – but of course, he's not really that either. Afterwards he's a foreigner but not a Britisher, unable to take either the Hindu or the Muslim side during the Independence movement and Partition. Finally he is caught up in a small, random act of violence, killed by a petty thief and quickly forgotten by his neighbors and acquaintances (not really a spoiler since this happens on page one, and then the rest of the novel is told in flashback).
I've been meaning to read this book for literally years, since it's often recommended as one of the classics of Indian fiction, but despite searching I only managed to find a copy recently. After waiting so long to read it, it's not at all what I expected. It's a small short book, a quiet book, about a small, passionless life defined more by what it lacks than what it holds. The writing is lovely and the arc is a deep sort of sadness; it's got mono no aware feel (wrong culture, I know), the beauty of loss and the wistfulness of impermanence. But I'd expected something grander, something more about The Meaning of India. And that's just not this book. It is worth reading though, at least if you want to feel sad for an afternoon.
This is not a novel about either of those tragedies. Instead it's a novel about a man who is forever isolated, forever an outsider, cut off from the community that even tragedy, at least, would engender. In Berlin he is not a German because he's a Jew. In Calcutta during WWII (still a British colony then, remember) he is considered an foreign national due to his German citizenship – but of course, he's not really that either. Afterwards he's a foreigner but not a Britisher, unable to take either the Hindu or the Muslim side during the Independence movement and Partition. Finally he is caught up in a small, random act of violence, killed by a petty thief and quickly forgotten by his neighbors and acquaintances (not really a spoiler since this happens on page one, and then the rest of the novel is told in flashback).
I've been meaning to read this book for literally years, since it's often recommended as one of the classics of Indian fiction, but despite searching I only managed to find a copy recently. After waiting so long to read it, it's not at all what I expected. It's a small short book, a quiet book, about a small, passionless life defined more by what it lacks than what it holds. The writing is lovely and the arc is a deep sort of sadness; it's got mono no aware feel (wrong culture, I know), the beauty of loss and the wistfulness of impermanence. But I'd expected something grander, something more about The Meaning of India. And that's just not this book. It is worth reading though, at least if you want to feel sad for an afternoon.
June 25, 2007
I was pretty keen on Anita Desai in years past, especially after reading "Clear Light of Day." (It's superb.) But there are several of her books I hadn't read, and she had dropped off my radar. Her daughter's recent success (Kiran won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for "The Inheritance of Loss") prompted me to revisit her writing.
"Baumgartner's Bombay" draws on Desai's unusual heritage: a German mother and an Indian father. It's the story of Hugo Baumgartner, a German Jew who flees the impending Holocaust in his homeland and comes to India, where he ends up a shabby old man living in a Bombay apartment with many cats, reflecting on his life.
Though the novel isn't as plot-driven as I might have wished, and the ending too melodramatic, the prose is consistently elegant, and precise. Desai paints vivid portraits of both Berlin and Bombay (and a few other locales in between). She's also wonderful in handling the rhythms and quirks of Indian English speech. A character named Farrokh, who owns the Cafe de Paris where Baumgartner eats, at one point delivers a pitch-perfect tirade that I simply had to read aloud.
"Baumgartner's Bombay" draws on Desai's unusual heritage: a German mother and an Indian father. It's the story of Hugo Baumgartner, a German Jew who flees the impending Holocaust in his homeland and comes to India, where he ends up a shabby old man living in a Bombay apartment with many cats, reflecting on his life.
Though the novel isn't as plot-driven as I might have wished, and the ending too melodramatic, the prose is consistently elegant, and precise. Desai paints vivid portraits of both Berlin and Bombay (and a few other locales in between). She's also wonderful in handling the rhythms and quirks of Indian English speech. A character named Farrokh, who owns the Cafe de Paris where Baumgartner eats, at one point delivers a pitch-perfect tirade that I simply had to read aloud.
March 27, 2014
I found this book very interesting but I'm not sure I would have ever picked it up or finished it if not for reading it in a class. More like 3.5 stars for me. I really liked Hugo and found the juxtaposition of the distant Holocaust with the distant events of India (not physically, but on the periphery of Hugo's experience) super effective. I liked seeing a Holocaust story that wasn't just a Holocaust story, but the story of a jew (rather than a Jew) struggling through a similar yet different kind of life and ensuing guilt. Intriguing for sure, but I'm not confident that I would pick it up again.
September 23, 2018
A profoundly sad book on disenchantment, loneliness and the eternal yearning to find "one's" home. The writing is exquisite and Desai was able to make readers feel Baumgartner's internal pathos and struggle for finding his identity in an increasingly polarized world.
I would highly recommend this book but please bring in tissues!
My Rating - 5/5 (Ruddy Brilliant!)
I would highly recommend this book but please bring in tissues!
My Rating - 5/5 (Ruddy Brilliant!)
March 3, 2018
This was my second time reading this book and although I only gave it three stars, I do think it deals with some very interesting themes and topics and is a good book for people to read.
The story starts out with Baumgartner as he is now, a Jewish German living in Bombay. He spends all of his time nursing sick cats back to health and then keeping them as his pets. His only human friend is another German, Lotte.
The story then casts back to Baumgartner's childhood. He grew up in Germany before the Second World War broke out but when anti semitic feeling was growing. The narrative is told from his perspective as a child and he doesn't understand why his nanny has left and he has had to change schools and why they are getting poorer. He also doesn't understand why people start vandalising his father's shop and why his dad is suddenly dragged away by the police in the middle of the night.
Baumgartner is sent to India, a British terrority at the time, for safety. However, when Britain declare war on Germany, it is not long before Baumgartner is put in a Prisoner of War camp. The first time I read this book was really my first realisation that this did happen to Jews in the war and I think it is a real under-represented part of history. That Jewish refugees, when they thought they were in a place of safety, were taken and made to live in camps for the duration of the war. Baumgartner spends 6 years in the camp locked up with other Jews but also with Nazis.
After the war, when Baumgartner is released, there isn't much for him to go back to and India is now in policitical turmoil as they are trying to break free from British rule. After Baumgartner's friend dies, he lives with just his cats and takes solace in them.
One day Baumgartner is visiting his local cafe when the cafe owner asks him for help with a drug riddled German that has passed out in his cafe. Baumgartner takes the young Aryan man home and tries to help him and sadly is stabbed and murdered by the man.
It is such a tragic ending for poor Baumgartner. The significance of the Aryan German killing the Jewish German is also especially poignant.
This is not the most gripping book but does create a lot of discussion. I would recommend reading it at least once.
The story starts out with Baumgartner as he is now, a Jewish German living in Bombay. He spends all of his time nursing sick cats back to health and then keeping them as his pets. His only human friend is another German, Lotte.
The story then casts back to Baumgartner's childhood. He grew up in Germany before the Second World War broke out but when anti semitic feeling was growing. The narrative is told from his perspective as a child and he doesn't understand why his nanny has left and he has had to change schools and why they are getting poorer. He also doesn't understand why people start vandalising his father's shop and why his dad is suddenly dragged away by the police in the middle of the night.
Baumgartner is sent to India, a British terrority at the time, for safety. However, when Britain declare war on Germany, it is not long before Baumgartner is put in a Prisoner of War camp. The first time I read this book was really my first realisation that this did happen to Jews in the war and I think it is a real under-represented part of history. That Jewish refugees, when they thought they were in a place of safety, were taken and made to live in camps for the duration of the war. Baumgartner spends 6 years in the camp locked up with other Jews but also with Nazis.
After the war, when Baumgartner is released, there isn't much for him to go back to and India is now in policitical turmoil as they are trying to break free from British rule. After Baumgartner's friend dies, he lives with just his cats and takes solace in them.
One day Baumgartner is visiting his local cafe when the cafe owner asks him for help with a drug riddled German that has passed out in his cafe. Baumgartner takes the young Aryan man home and tries to help him and sadly is stabbed and murdered by the man.
It is such a tragic ending for poor Baumgartner. The significance of the Aryan German killing the Jewish German is also especially poignant.
This is not the most gripping book but does create a lot of discussion. I would recommend reading it at least once.
October 1, 2014
I hate giving books 2 stars. I usually reserve them for the really bad ones. The really lazy ones.
But I couldn't help it. This is exquisitely written. Every word carefully chosen, polished, examined and then presented.
And like most such well-written books, it falls victim to its own sophistication.
With some 80 pages left I ran through the book and didn't feel like I missed anything. I realised that I didn't care much about the character anymore.
So much effort goes into describing the character's surroundings, and the people around him, word after word, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, that there is almost nothing, about the character himself. What drives Baumgartner? What does he love? What makes him laugh, makes him cry? There's little light shed on it, only some brief moments, where despite all that he goes through, he shows some emotion. He's moslty a machine walking through life, with the author more interested in every 'thing' around him, that she can describe with wonderful words, while not pausing to consider the man himself. The writing is so dramatic that at specially banal moments I just couldn't help laughing.
Which is an absolute shame, because you have a person, a Jew, growing up in Nazi Germany, fleeing to live in India, getting arrested, spending 6 years in jail and then picking back his life before dying a horrid death in the 70s in downtown Mumbai. It's a story worth sinking into. But sadly gets reduced to a sequence of events tied only by one man being part of them.
And please, dear Random House, surely you can afford a decent proofreader?! I almost want to perversely award the book one extra star for all the typos and grammatical mistakes that were left strewn around, like easter eggs to keep me interested.
But I couldn't help it. This is exquisitely written. Every word carefully chosen, polished, examined and then presented.
And like most such well-written books, it falls victim to its own sophistication.
With some 80 pages left I ran through the book and didn't feel like I missed anything. I realised that I didn't care much about the character anymore.
So much effort goes into describing the character's surroundings, and the people around him, word after word, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, that there is almost nothing, about the character himself. What drives Baumgartner? What does he love? What makes him laugh, makes him cry? There's little light shed on it, only some brief moments, where despite all that he goes through, he shows some emotion. He's moslty a machine walking through life, with the author more interested in every 'thing' around him, that she can describe with wonderful words, while not pausing to consider the man himself. The writing is so dramatic that at specially banal moments I just couldn't help laughing.
Which is an absolute shame, because you have a person, a Jew, growing up in Nazi Germany, fleeing to live in India, getting arrested, spending 6 years in jail and then picking back his life before dying a horrid death in the 70s in downtown Mumbai. It's a story worth sinking into. But sadly gets reduced to a sequence of events tied only by one man being part of them.
And please, dear Random House, surely you can afford a decent proofreader?! I almost want to perversely award the book one extra star for all the typos and grammatical mistakes that were left strewn around, like easter eggs to keep me interested.
December 22, 2017
Adorabile romanzone americano ambientato a Bombay che ripropone alcuni temi classici di Bromfield: LUI spettatore che ha visto molto mondo ed è un po’ stanco del buttarsi via ma moralmente sano, LEI allegra-un-po’-troppo che si è buttata via abbastanza ma moralmente sana, L’ALTRO l’eroe integerrimo che non si è buttato via mai. Di contorno un bel po’ di personaggi magnificamente descritti per fanno da quinte all’inevitabile storia d’amore.
Bromfield ha una capacità di analisi e descrizione della psicologia intima e dei sentimenti che fa venire voglia di bruciare su due piedi tutti i successivi tentativi (dai minimalisti in su e in giù) di ridurre la rappresentazione della realtà a consecutio di minimi eventi. Ha l’afflato del romanzone (certo, devono piacere i romanzoni, con la loro capacità di farti desiderare che non finiscano mai) e il tocco psicologico del romanzo intimo (senza sfrucugliare troppo nell’intimità).
Se fosse un genio sarebbe la sintesi tra Tolstoj e Woolf, non lo è, ma è pur sempre un signor scrittore.
Bromfield ha una capacità di analisi e descrizione della psicologia intima e dei sentimenti che fa venire voglia di bruciare su due piedi tutti i successivi tentativi (dai minimalisti in su e in giù) di ridurre la rappresentazione della realtà a consecutio di minimi eventi. Ha l’afflato del romanzone (certo, devono piacere i romanzoni, con la loro capacità di farti desiderare che non finiscano mai) e il tocco psicologico del romanzo intimo (senza sfrucugliare troppo nell’intimità).
Se fosse un genio sarebbe la sintesi tra Tolstoj e Woolf, non lo è, ma è pur sempre un signor scrittore.
September 7, 2008
in depth look at the life of a WWII refugee who fled to India. desai shows you the complete rupture the Nazis caused in Hugo's life. his life in India is like a strange charade Hugo puts on just to pass the time. he creates no meaning for himself in India. he is just there making a living.
as Hugo ages he and Lotte get gross and disheveled and it doesn't seem to bother them. their lifestyle is so solitary. Hugo never desires to go back no matter how foreign and out of place he is. without mother there is no Germany. his mother's silence is the strongest force in Hugo's life.
i've never associated India with WWII in any way. it was interesting to see western history from an Asian perspective.
as Hugo ages he and Lotte get gross and disheveled and it doesn't seem to bother them. their lifestyle is so solitary. Hugo never desires to go back no matter how foreign and out of place he is. without mother there is no Germany. his mother's silence is the strongest force in Hugo's life.
i've never associated India with WWII in any way. it was interesting to see western history from an Asian perspective.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 22, 2009
Too slow-going. The author (a German-Indian non-Jew) did not do a good job at all of portraying the personal tragedy of the Holocaust. Also, I found myself not caring about any of the characters, since they all were sort of lifeless (although that was sort of the point, I guess). What I did like was the way the author started the book in a way that was confusing at the time, until you tied it all together at the end of the book. Still, I don't think I would recommend this to others.
September 11, 2017
I really thought this book was more than "okay" (2 stars), but I can't say that I "liked it" (3 stars). It took me three tries to get started. It was such a painful story. Yes, Desai writes with incredible beauty and compassion, but still, I wish I had never met these characters -- their lives are just too sad to contemplate. At the same time, I know it's important to listen to their story. Is it more disturbing to me that the story is sad, or that the sadness is true?
May 4, 2019
Not really an uplifting read but I am glad I chose to read it. Desai's writing is tragic and beautiful. Although, even with the beautiful writing, the book lacks a good plot. At some points, it was outright boring. I had been reading this book for over a month now and had gotten very attached to the main character so I found the ending totally heartbreaking and uncalled for. Maybe I will reread it someday to understand it better.
November 17, 2020
Strepitosamente bello. Per me, il capolavoro della bravissima Desai.
August 22, 2020
This has all the hallmarks of Anita Desai’s pitch perfect prose- her Clear Light Of Day and Village By The Sea are two of my favourite novels of all time- unforgettable characters, historical events playing out, families torn apart, literary prowess that delights.
This is more depressing than I would’ve liked, but the darkness inherent in her work keeps me coming back for more. Slow yet compelling.
This is more depressing than I would’ve liked, but the darkness inherent in her work keeps me coming back for more. Slow yet compelling.
June 18, 2018
Unexpected find: a book about a Jewish orphan who finds himself in India after fleeing the Nazis. The book goes back and forth between the present (the 1980's) and his past growing up in Nazi Germany and then spending WWII in a British internment camp for "resident enemy aliens" (which I didn't know they had). The main character is an extremely cowardly homebody who never makes any real friends and prefers to sit out interesting events in Jewish culture or Indian history, but the author more than makes up for it in her descriptive prose.
January 31, 2013
Do not expect to find too much of Bombay in the book. It is more about Baumgartner than about Bombay. Bombay is incidental as Baumgartner is forced to settle down in this city.
The book covers the holocaust, the partition, and the poverty in India at a very high level through the eyes of an holocaust escapee Hugo Baumgartner.
Not a read for Indians who are grounded in reality of India. Not to say that the book does not portray realism, it does, but the depth is missing.
The book covers the holocaust, the partition, and the poverty in India at a very high level through the eyes of an holocaust escapee Hugo Baumgartner.
Not a read for Indians who are grounded in reality of India. Not to say that the book does not portray realism, it does, but the depth is missing.
November 29, 2013
Found the book to be boring, but nevertheless I wanted to finish it since I started reading it. The most exciting chapter was the last chapter where there was some action. Otherwise the whole book explains how Hugo see India. We get a very vivid picture of India from Hugo's eyes. Although Hugo is considered to be a silly and ignorant man, the attention he pays to details and his understanding of things around him surpasses his characteristics as explained in his book.
February 20, 2012
I don't really think I like it. It was...I don't like it. I probably won't read it again. I know I missed the deep meaning of this novel. I will find out what it is tomorrow. Sigh...I really want to like at least one of the novels in this class.
May 29, 2017
more style, least content.I am fan of this author, though.
March 14, 2022
The tale of unfortunate Baumgartner, a Jewish German man who escapes Germany just before the Nazi’s advance across Europe and incarceration of Jews. Landing in India, he sees a strange mystical land and ends up in Bombay with new acquaintances.
‘ In Germany he had been dark- his darkness had marked him the Jew, der Jude. In India he was fair- and that marked him the firanghi. In both lands, the unacceptable. ‘
‘Baumgartner slept, in ignorance. Ignorance was, after all, his element. Ignorance was what he had made his own. It was his country, the one he lived in with familiarity and resignation and relief.’
‘ In Germany he had been dark- his darkness had marked him the Jew, der Jude. In India he was fair- and that marked him the firanghi. In both lands, the unacceptable. ‘
‘Baumgartner slept, in ignorance. Ignorance was, after all, his element. Ignorance was what he had made his own. It was his country, the one he lived in with familiarity and resignation and relief.’
April 28, 2019
Exquisite, intimate, enveloping, humid, evocation of the rich detail and jarring extremes of Bombay, provides the context for this profound exploration of a character. Desai has an uncanny ability to slowly draw you inside her characters. The threads of memory peep in and out of the story. The tragedy of the ending is hinted by the beginning, but it simmers throughout and is not resolved until the last few pages. My first question on finishing was "what else has she written ? ". The second, "why has it taken me so long to discover her?".
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April 11, 2024DNF- Was simply not interested enough in the content to continue reading it. Won't end up writing a paper on it and the unit we read this for in class has since ended. It will live on the shelf until the end of the semester and probably get donated or resold.
February 2, 2013
By Anita Desai. Grade: B+
Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay builds an old city, a city reverentially unknown to the 21st century. It’s a story of a German. It’s a story of an exile. It’s a story of a lone crunching man but not a story of retribution.
BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany?and his Jewish heritage?for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny"
Baumgartner's Bombay
Hugo Baumgartner, a Jew fearing the Nazi regime, fans away his fears and anxieties and lands up in Calcutta in the wake of a bright future. But he ends kicking dust in jail as his country is at war. Six years pass and he’s out in the streets of Calcutta. His years in jail are less fun and morose. His acquaintance with Lotte (who marries a wealthy Indian and escapes imprisonment) is rekindled in Bombay many years later. They find themselves in each other’s comforts. Their luxuries are alcohol. They immerse their sorrows and loneliness in it and worry about nothing. Baumgartner has no friends in the big city. He knows a handful of them. Chimanlal, his business partner; Farrokh, the restaurateur who helps Baumgartner with scraps of food from the previous night for his cats; and his neighbours who he ‘namastes’ every day. Baumgartner is a loner for most part of the story even though Lotte acquires a sizable portion in his life as his friend from a known world.
Ms Desai imitates her own style by setting the story in a nonlinear frame. In Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay, Hugo Baumgartner is impressively not understood by humans, but very familiar with the cats. The story is like a dream sequence – the good, bad and ugly ends with a saline residuum. Death of war and death of Baumgartner - both happen in different continents and different contexts, and yet greed is the cause of war, and the same greed kills Baumgartner. No amount of kindness could alleviate his loneliness.
The lamentable and questionable form is where Anita Desai stereotypes Indian English. Every person Baumgartner meets speaks poor English or a new version of English. That sort of sting has to be removed. It serves no purpose. The climax that’s supposed to be meaty minces the meat. It should have stopped a couple of pages before or should have had a couple of pages more. There’s no need for finality or closure in a story. But it shouldn't leave the readers at crossroads.
Ms Desai has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize thrice for Clear Light of Day; In Custody; Fasting, Feasting. From a writer of such calibre, prose can’t be faltered, it requires slow reading and digesting one thing at a time. If writers like R.K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand undivided the borders for Indian English Literature, writers like Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri became the faces of Indian English Literature globally.
In Baumgartner’s Bombay, there’s as much India as there’s Germany. Desai bends her beak to the minutest details and spends her intelligence on describing the characters rather than the situations. It is through the characters we see and seek the hot long summers. The book has summer as a minor character. And through the characters we learn greed can kill and lost is lost forever. The loss cannot be replaced by anything new.
Originally reviewed at www.vaultofbooks.com
Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay builds an old city, a city reverentially unknown to the 21st century. It’s a story of a German. It’s a story of an exile. It’s a story of a lone crunching man but not a story of retribution.
BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany?and his Jewish heritage?for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny"
Baumgartner's Bombay
Hugo Baumgartner, a Jew fearing the Nazi regime, fans away his fears and anxieties and lands up in Calcutta in the wake of a bright future. But he ends kicking dust in jail as his country is at war. Six years pass and he’s out in the streets of Calcutta. His years in jail are less fun and morose. His acquaintance with Lotte (who marries a wealthy Indian and escapes imprisonment) is rekindled in Bombay many years later. They find themselves in each other’s comforts. Their luxuries are alcohol. They immerse their sorrows and loneliness in it and worry about nothing. Baumgartner has no friends in the big city. He knows a handful of them. Chimanlal, his business partner; Farrokh, the restaurateur who helps Baumgartner with scraps of food from the previous night for his cats; and his neighbours who he ‘namastes’ every day. Baumgartner is a loner for most part of the story even though Lotte acquires a sizable portion in his life as his friend from a known world.
Ms Desai imitates her own style by setting the story in a nonlinear frame. In Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay, Hugo Baumgartner is impressively not understood by humans, but very familiar with the cats. The story is like a dream sequence – the good, bad and ugly ends with a saline residuum. Death of war and death of Baumgartner - both happen in different continents and different contexts, and yet greed is the cause of war, and the same greed kills Baumgartner. No amount of kindness could alleviate his loneliness.
The lamentable and questionable form is where Anita Desai stereotypes Indian English. Every person Baumgartner meets speaks poor English or a new version of English. That sort of sting has to be removed. It serves no purpose. The climax that’s supposed to be meaty minces the meat. It should have stopped a couple of pages before or should have had a couple of pages more. There’s no need for finality or closure in a story. But it shouldn't leave the readers at crossroads.
Ms Desai has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize thrice for Clear Light of Day; In Custody; Fasting, Feasting. From a writer of such calibre, prose can’t be faltered, it requires slow reading and digesting one thing at a time. If writers like R.K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand undivided the borders for Indian English Literature, writers like Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri became the faces of Indian English Literature globally.
In Baumgartner’s Bombay, there’s as much India as there’s Germany. Desai bends her beak to the minutest details and spends her intelligence on describing the characters rather than the situations. It is through the characters we see and seek the hot long summers. The book has summer as a minor character. And through the characters we learn greed can kill and lost is lost forever. The loss cannot be replaced by anything new.
Originally reviewed at www.vaultofbooks.com
August 21, 2021
Baumgartner could be a character written by one of the early classic Yiddish writers, for example, Sholem Aleichem's *Tevye, the Dairyman.* Where Tevye had a partner in God, though, or felt he did, Baumgartner was more so on his own despite having relationships with a series of other suffering humans.
I loved this book and I picked it because I thought it was written by the author of *The Inheritance of Loss*. It turns out that it was written by that author's *mother* and I'm so fortunate for my mistake.
This is one of the greatest books I've ever read because I cared deeply about Baumgartner and because I thought about tragic world events of the '40s in newly astonishing ways. How brilliant to include the fallout of the Holocaust and of the Partition in a single novel!
I loved this book and I picked it because I thought it was written by the author of *The Inheritance of Loss*. It turns out that it was written by that author's *mother* and I'm so fortunate for my mistake.
This is one of the greatest books I've ever read because I cared deeply about Baumgartner and because I thought about tragic world events of the '40s in newly astonishing ways. How brilliant to include the fallout of the Holocaust and of the Partition in a single novel!
August 8, 2016
A zeitgeist cause of the tragic events that occur in this book is suggested near the beginning:
The story itself drags a bit at times, and the book seems to be only a surface examination of its theme. The character of Lotte is not fully developed, nor consistently portrayed.
Her teeth bit on the crystals and her nerves screamed at their sweetness. All the marzipan, all the barley sugar, the chocolates and toffees of childhood descended on her with their soft, sticking, suffocating sweetness. Enough to embrace her, enough to stifle her, enough to obliterate her. Sugary, treacly, warm, oozing love, childhood love, little mice and bunny rabbits of love--sweet, warm, choking, childish love. Lotte wept and drowned.P. 5 (Penguin paperback). The dishonesty of the visions parents give to children in the idealized German childhood lead alternatively to weakness and vulnerability, or to self-absorption and a sense of entitlement. Should these two types meet, the weak will not fare well. This situation echoes on a small scale the situation in Germany from the late 30's to the end of the war, with its disastrous consequenses.
The story itself drags a bit at times, and the book seems to be only a surface examination of its theme. The character of Lotte is not fully developed, nor consistently portrayed.
November 5, 2014
The teen-aged Hugo Baumgartner is sent to Calcutta via Venice when his family's furniture business is destroyed by the Nazis, his father is sent to a concentration camp, and his mother has gone into hiding. His mother agrees to send her only son to India, but when he arrives he is imprisoned in an internment camp as a 'hostile alien'. After six years, he is released and ends up in Bombay where he befriends Lotte, the unhappy dancer, Farrokh, the owner of a cafe, and Kurt, the young Aryan druggie, but mostly he spends time with his assortment of cat-friends who make visitors to his small apartment so uncomfortable they resort to holding handkerchiefs to their noses.
The story opens with a murder and weaves present and past together in Desai's graceful style of prose, however it doesn't captivate the reader - or at least not this one. While I understood Baumgartner's life to be a miserable one, I didn't reach the point of empathizing with him. I understood the irony of his internment, and found humor in his exchanges with Farrokh and Kurt, but in everything I looked on as a passive observer.
The story opens with a murder and weaves present and past together in Desai's graceful style of prose, however it doesn't captivate the reader - or at least not this one. While I understood Baumgartner's life to be a miserable one, I didn't reach the point of empathizing with him. I understood the irony of his internment, and found humor in his exchanges with Farrokh and Kurt, but in everything I looked on as a passive observer.
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