The Inscrutable Americans

the long version

The hilarious novel describes one year spent on a small university campus in the U.S.A. by an Indian student. He comes out of a small town, locally reputed to be 'the Paris of Madhya Pradesh'. His English is comically Indian, and his initial notions of America are absurdly inadequate and stereotyped. The theme of the novel is his comic discovery of America and and his own growth and maturing through his diverse adventures there. The novel is thus a variation on the form of the bildungsroman with a fool-protagonist, with the difference that the native wit of the protagonist far transcends his linguistic limitations. This novel thus has an acuteness and a depth of meaning which go far beyond the obvious comic implications of the chosen initial situation.