Serious Men

A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbais humid tenements. Ayyan Mani will not be constrained by Indian traditions. Despite working at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai as the lowly personal assistant to a brilliant but insufferable astronomer, he dreams of more for himself and his family. Ever wily and ambitious, Ayyan weaves two plots: the first to cheer up his weary, soap-opera-addicted wife by creating outrageous fictions around their ten-year-old son; the other to sabotage the married director by using his bosss seeming romance with the institutes first femaleand very attractiveresearcher. Meanwhile, as the institutes Brahmins wage a vicious war over theories about alien life, Ayyan sees his deceptions intertwining and setting in motion a series of extraordinary events he cannot stop. Unfailingly funny and irreverent, Serious Men is at once a hilarious portrayal of runaway egos and ambitions and a moving portrait of love and its strange workings. One of 2010s First Novels to Savor. Sunday Telegraph From Publishers Weekly Joseph, an editor of magazines in India, sets up in his debut a subtly wicked satire of subterfuge and ambition that bounces between the Mumbai tenement where low-caste Ayyan Mani lives, and the esteemed research institute where he labors as the assistant of top researcher Arvind Acharya. Forever spiteful toward his privileged superiors, Ayyan is deviously mischievous and pulls off a stunt that ends with his half-deaf (but otherwise ordinary) son being proclaimed in the local news as a boy genius. Meanwhile, Arvind is obsessed with proving his theory that extraterrestrial microbes are raining down on Earth from the upper atmosphere. While his theory is promising, an affair with a seductive astrobiologist threatens to cost him his life's work. Naturally, the conniving Ayyan is involved there as well. While Ayyan's inspired smalltime villainy drives the narrative and provides more than its share of humor, it's occasionally undermined by overheated prose and uneven pacing that spirals into a panicked blitz near the end. Overall, though, this is a sharp, au courant satire, like a more mannered White Tiger. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist This ambitious debut cleverly weaves diverging plots of love, knowledge, class, and ambition. Low-caste Ayyan Mani works as an assistant to the director of the Institute of Theory and Research, where he carefully observes the interactions of the institutes scientists. At night he returns to his small Mumbai tenement apartment, which he shares with his anxious wife and ten-year-old son Adi. Yearning for a better life for his family, Ayyan begins to spin a series of fabricated tales about his handicapped son, stories that slowly propel a series of life-changing events. Meanwhile, Ayyans hard-nosed genius boss, Arvind Acharya, is fixated on his theory of alien existence, and puts his professional reputation on the line. Arvinds credibility is further complicated by the arrival of the institutes first female researcher, a young woman who is attractive and manipulative. As Arvinds professional ambitions give way to personal desire, Ayyans carefully constructed fictions begin to arouse suspicion. Josephs finely portrayed characters exude wit and warmth in this engaging and introspective tale. --Leah Strauss "Ayyan Mani works in the Institute of Theory and Research as a lowly personal assistant to a brilliant, insufferable astronomer, Arvind Acharya, who is obsessed with his theory about microscopic aliens falling to earth. Mani is one of the thousands of men stranded in the slums of Mumbai, a seemingly insignificant cog in the Institute's machinery. But the opportunistic Mani is also an astute observer and sly eavesdropper, and he makes sure he knows everything that is going on in the Institute, listening in on private conversations, and opening, reading, and resealing confidential couriered letters "Partly to entertain himself, partly to cheer up his once-animated but now work-worn wife, partly to bolster his ten-year-old son's confidence, Mani weaves an outrageous fiction around the boy -- a fiction that captures the interest of his superiors and threatens to set into motion an unstoppable and disastrous chain of events. Added to that is the arrival of the beautiful Dr. Oparna -- the first woman ever to work at the Institute -- and the ongoing 'war of the Brahmins.' And Mani, struggling to keep his own dreams alive, sees opportunity in everything."--Publisher description