FRIEND OF MY YOUTH

Amit Chaudhuri

In this novella, a successful writer makes repeated trips for book readings to Mumbai, the city in which he was raised but with which he feels no connection. The only man he sees in the city is a school friend, Ramu—unemployed, unmarried, a former drug addict, and a man always at a loose end. The men appear outwardly unalike, but they share a bond in the spatial and temporal limbo of Mumbai. The novella is a meditation on failure and the quiet desperation of middle age.

Penguin Random House india, 120 pages, Rs 499