The Romantics

The Romantics looks to Flaubert's Sentimental Education, to E.M. Forster, to Turgenev. But it is the product of a distinctive and sharp intelligence

The Romantics looks to Flaubert's Sentimental Education, to E.M. Forster, to Turgenev. But it is the product of a distinctive and sharp intelligence

A sensitive and introspective novel . . . a meditation on hope and failure. Mishra's evocations of Indian landscape and customs are vivid and thoughtful; his prose clean and unhampered and his descriptive passages to be savoured

Contemporary India is brought to vigorous, thrumming life in the pages of The Romantics

If you buy one literary novel this year, make sure it's this

This bright new star is the real thing

[A]n intriguing combination of casual grace and emotional intensity, peppered with discreet social comment on caste, class, sectarian strife, the state of the nation . . . a charming debut

A work of art, a first novel of the highest achievement...a writer whose work will last. Read it and find yourself at the source of something great

A first novel of astonishing maturity

[An] extraordinary debut novel . . . a supernova

Mishra's lyrical descriptions . . . and the depth of culture the region offers, is a haunting reminder of India's power to bewitch

Pankaj Mishra's books include The Romantics , which won the LA Times ' Art Seidenbaum Award for fiction, Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire . He contributes political and literary essays to the Guardian , the London Review of Books , the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker . A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London.