The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas
by Paul Theroux
List Price:
Our Price: $0.19
You Save: $24.81 (99%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Paul TherouxEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-26
ISBN: 0618943323
Number of pages: 274
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas
Book Review: SAVVY, SENSUAL, SPELLBINDING -- PURE LITERARY CANDY!
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading "The Elephanta Suite" by Paul Theroux, was a pure delight--virtual nonstop literary pleasure! Each novella transported me on an exotic sensual journey through an India few get an opportunity to observe. Everything about these stories was unexpected and new. This was one rollicking armchair adventure ride.
In three, roughly 80-page mininovels, Theroux doesn't give us the sanitized Merchant-and-Ivory India. He doesn't give us the tidy India of best-selling contemporary novels. Rather, he exposes us to the real underbelly of Indian culture. This is an India of pleading beggars, teenage prostitutes, weirdly comic salesmen, and people so pompous they are like parodies. Most of all, this is an India where poor people are as abundant as fleas and virtually every one will do almost anything to get one tiny step ahead.
Each of the novellas deals with American travelers. The stories are superficially interlaced. These travelers are in India at approximately the same time. In odd ways, their paths cross. It is amusing to discover these completely unimportant connections, so I won't say any more. If you discover them, pat yourself on the back and know that you are a careful reader. If you miss them, don't worry: these connections are of absolutely no importance.
The first novella, "Monkey Hill," tells the tale of a wealthy American couple who vacation in India at a luxury retreat. They only see the real India from the window of their limousine as they are rushed from the airport to their lush hilltop health-spa retreat. Through brief sexual encounters with two startlingly beautiful young people working at the resort, the wife and husband are each introduced separately to the other India--the hovel of a small rural village located completely out-of-sight within walking distance from the resort. Little do they realize that the village is currently a hotbed of Hindu-Muslim cultural and religious strife, a power-keg just waiting to go off.
The second novella, "The Gateway of India," is about one of those American businessmen who give global business and America travelers a well-deserved bad reputation. This man is everything an American in India shouldn't be. At first completely terrified by India's alien culture, the businessman hides in his hotel eating canned food and drinking purified water. By chance he is catapulted into the other India, and falls in love with the new, sexually liberated person he becomes. In the end, this story has an interesting twist that you won't see coming.
The last novella, "The Elephant God," deals with a young female Ivy-League backpacker. Idealistically, she ends up living in a religious retreat, loving every moment of it. She thinks it's free, and plays with the idea of living there forever. Her Indian roommates subtly make it known to her that she needs to donate a substantial sum of money each month to help pay for her living costs. So she finds a job at a global call center training workers to mimic an everyday American accent and style of speech. All goes well until a call-center worker takes an unwanted interest in her and starts stalking her.
I am an outrageously prolific reader, but this is the first set of novellas that I have every purchased. I was surprised at how delighted I was with these three mininovels. If this were a novel, I might have read it in one day--the experience was that compelling. But because these were novellas, I purposefully stopped myself after each one and thought about the tale for a day or two before going on to the next. These stories have intellectual depth that makes it easy to think about them long after you've finished the tale.
I highly recommend this work. In fact, I can't wait to pack up my copy and send it to my brother. He was the one who enthusiastically recommended Theroux's "The Mosquito Coast" to me some 25 years ago. Now I can earnestly return the favor!
Summary of The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas
A master of the travel narrative weaves three intertwined novellas of Westerners transformed by their sojourns in India.
This startling, far-reaching book captures the tumult, ambition, hardship, and serenity that mark today?s India. Theroux?s Westerners risk venturing far beyond the subcontinent?s well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A middle-aged couple on vacation veers heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds succor in Mumbai?s reeking slums. And a young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore.
We also meet Indian characters as singular as they are reflective of the country?s subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar, an earnest young striver whose personality is rewired by acquiring an American accent, a miracle-working guru, and others.
As ever, Theroux?s portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect. The Elephanta Suite urges us toward a fresh, compelling, and often inspiring notion of what India is, and what it can do to those who try to lose--or find--themselves there.
This startling, far-reaching book captures the tumult, ambition, hardship, and serenity that mark today?s India. Theroux?s Westerners risk venturing far beyond the subcontinent?s well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A middle-aged couple on vacation veers heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds succor in Mumbai?s reeking slums. And a young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore.
We also meet Indian characters as singular as they are reflective of the country?s subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar, an earnest young striver whose personality is rewired by acquiring an American accent, a miracle-working guru, and others.
As ever, Theroux?s portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect. The Elephanta Suite urges us toward a fresh, compelling, and often inspiring notion of what India is, and what it can do to those who try to lose--or find--themselves there.
Short Stories Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Short Stories Books
The Roald Dahl Treasuryby Roald Dahl
Jonathan Cape; Published: 1997; Hardcover; Book
The Red Pony (Twentieth-Century Classics)by John Steinbeck
Penguin Classics; Published: 1994-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.28
Price in other shops:
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountainby Robert Olen Butler
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1993-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.15
Price in other shops:
Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyonby Damon Runyon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1992-11-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $42.35
How We Are Hungryby Dave Eggers
PENGUIN; Published: 2006-02-23; Paperback; Book
Dressing Up for the Carnivalby Carol Shields
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.79
Price in other shops:
East, Westby Salman Rushdie
Vintage Books; Published: 2006-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.92
Price in other shops:
Local Girlsby Alice Hoffman
Vintage/Ebury (a Division of Random; Published: 2000-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.25
Price in other shops:
Someone to Watch Over Me: Storiesby Richard Bausch
Harper Perennial; Published: 2000-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.60
Price in other shops:
Faithless: Tales of Transgressionby Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco; Published: 2001-03-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.04
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American Historyby S. C. Gwynne
Scribner; Published: 2010-05-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.36
Price in other shops:
The Voyage of the Rose City: An Adventure at Seaby John Moynihan
Spiegel & Grau; Published: 2011-10-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.60
Price in other shops:
My Other Lifeby Paul Theroux
Mariner Books; Published: 1997-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.11
Price in other shops:
Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writingsby Paul Theroux
Mariner Books; Published: 2001-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops:
The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americasby Paul Theroux
Mariner Books; Published: 1979-11-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Shantaram: A Novelby Gregory David Roberts
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2005-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.87
Price in other shops:
A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcuttaby Paul Theroux
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade; Published: 2010-02-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $0.21
Price in other shops:
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetownby Paul Theroux
Mariner Books; Published: 2004-04-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Elephanta Suiteby Paul Theroux
Mariner Books; Published: 2008-09-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.65
Price in other shops: