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Serious Men A Novel Manu Joseph 9780393338591 Books

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Serious Men A Novel Manu Joseph 9780393338591 Books

Challenges science itself. Taking up one of its major pursuits, the struggle between two factions about how to discover whether there is life elsewhere in the universe and by that to prove the origin and nature of life here, one faction arguing life started here and must exist elsewhere, the other faction arguing that life came here as prticles on asteroids, drifting from them to a fertile earth when entering its gravity, a struggle that comes at a high cost, not just in each faction's irrational drive to gain and obtain major financial and governmental support, but also in drawing so much of science away from what, apparently, the author believes should be the major focus of science, government, and the people, the nature of life here, the dreadful state it is in. Why are we giving so much over to studies such as the possible of life else where when we are ignoring the nature of life here and finding ways to lift its quality for all people.


Tags : Serious Men: A Novel [Manu Joseph] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong>A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbai’s humid tenements.</strong> 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,Manu Joseph,Serious Men: A Novel,W. W. Norton & Company,0393338592,FIC027020,Romance - Contemporary,Astronomers;Fiction.,Dalits;India;Fiction.,Research institutes;Employees;Fiction.,Adult & contemporary romance,American Light Romantic Fiction,Astronomers,Dalits,Employees,FICTION General,FICTION Literary,FICTION Romance Contemporary,Fiction,Fiction - General,General,India,Research institutes,Romance: Modern

Serious Men A Novel Manu Joseph 9780393338591 Books Reviews

This is a funny tale, not outrageously so, but suffused with humour. The writing is excellent. There is an underlying sadness to it, that portrays the human predicament, especially that of the middle class India of today and its obsession with science and engineering career tracks that has produced a generation of IT super men but are somehow two-dimensional in other areas of life. A further sad note is added by the gulf portrayed between the Dalit (Untouchable) office worker and the scientific staff of the research institute, most of whom are upper caste and upper crust.
Interesting and entertaining read. Well researched scientific premises are contained in the novel that brings some authenticity to the writings. The book looses you in its descriptions at times and tents the be a dreary departure from an interesting plot.

I thought the narrative on Opara was a bit chauvinistic and sexist in its approach and the outcome of the desolution of the relationship with Aarvind fit a stereotypical 'hell hath no fury' theme which showed in an unimaginable way.

The plot of Adi was entertaining and the cunning of Ayyand speaks to an unspoken underlying tension and philosophies that permeates societies battling classism
This is a humorous and subversive book about gender and caste divisions in India which also challenges our scientific reductionist view of the world. I will leave plot summaries to the other reviews, Ayyan Mani, the Dalit (untouchable) factotum of the scientific institute at the center of the book, somehow reminded me of Coyote, the trickster of Navajo legend, although he is also an example of the clever low-status person who is trying to keep some individuality, some uniqueness, some vitality in a country, a world of masses of people submerged in quotidian tasks of survival. Although there were a few points relating to social status that I didn't understand (e.g. some hand gestures that I think bespoke servility), the book was quite comprehensible despite my lack of experience with life in India.
In his debut novel, Indian magazine editor Manu Joseph takes on the caste system, Big Science, love, marriage, and sex, corruption in government, the news media, office politics, loyalty and betrayal, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the fate of the Universe -- yet it all hangs together somehow. This is Black Comedy, Indian-style.

Serious Men -- the book's satyrical title -- refers to Aravind Acharya, the world-famous cosmologist who directs the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai with its numerous minions. All are high-caste Brahmins. Acharya's deputy and most of the other scientists in the Institute seethe under the dictatorial and dismissive director, who sequesters all available funds for his project to prove that extraterrestrials "seeded" life on earth as microbes arriving on meteorites -- and continue to do this to this very day! Acharya is, of course, quite mad, and apparently has been so throughout his very long life. As he gradually loses control and lets slip the mask of sanity that has shielded him for decades, the Institute's deputy director and the cadres of radio astronomers who follow him stage a coup and seize the directorship once Acharya has fallen desperately in love with a beautiful young astrobiologist, the Institute's first female researcher.

However, it is Acharya's secretary, a Dalit ("Untouchable") named Ayyan Mani, who is the protagonist of this richly woven novel. Ayyan, we learn, has an IQ of 148, clearly higher than that of most of the Institute's researchers, and boils with resentment toward high-caste Brahmins with a consistency worthy of a revolutionary. As the drama unfolds in the Institute, with Ayyan recording every revealing conversation through a phone line left open into Acharya's office, the secretary applies himself to a clever plot to convince the world that his half-deaf 10-year-old son is a scientific genius. The principal action shifts among three sets the Institute, the adjoining Professors' Quarters, and the filthy, run-down "chawl" (high-rise slum) where Ayyan ekes out a bitter existence with his son and his fearful and superstitious wife.

Humor aside, Serious Men abounds with insight about India today in all its dynamism, its contradictions, its promise, and its sad, pervasive poverty. Manu Joseph is a writer worth watching.

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Challenges science itself. Taking up one of its major pursuits, the struggle between two factions about how to discover whether there is life elsewhere in the universe and by that to prove the origin and nature of life here, one faction arguing life started here and must exist elsewhere, the other faction arguing that life came here as prticles on asteroids, drifting from them to a fertile earth when entering its gravity, a struggle that comes at a high cost, not just in each faction's irrational drive to gain and obtain major financial and governmental support, but also in drawing so much of science away from what, apparently, the author believes should be the major focus of science, government, and the people, the nature of life here, the dreadful state it is in. Why are we giving so much over to studies such as the possible of life else where when we are ignoring the nature of life here and finding ways to lift its quality for all people.