The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel

This one of a kind, Kurt Vonnegut-moving and comic coming-of-age novel is set in a part of South India in which coconut trees, cobras, Catholic churches, and tiger dancers coexist with delicious fish and meat curries. Here, growing up, as an Indian boy with an American Dream set on fire by a dashingly handsome John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie, and by Readers Digest and Time magazine.. "The Revised Kama Sutra" is also an honest and uninhibited account of how hilariously difficult it was for many an Indian male, in the post-Portnoy Seventies (and to a smaller extent, even today), to lose his virginity. Inflamed by Western movies and erotic novels and how-to books on seducing women, the naïve protagonist, Vijay Prabhu, dreams of going to America to become a writer (but also, secretly, to fulfill his wild sexual fantasies). Described as an insight into the Indian male mind, this novel has been published in multiple editions and languages and was praised by Kurt Vonnegut as "very funny," by Indian Express as showing "a comic timing never seen in Indian novel to date," and by Publishers Weekly for its "considerable good humor and charm." "Indefatigable good humor . . . transcends the personal to stand for the contradictions and struggle of India as a whole. Considerable, irreverent charm."--Publishers Weekly, USA "Warm, sensitive, and very, very funny."--Business Standard. "Absolutely spectacular, irreverent, moving, funny."--Afternoon Despatch & Courier "Delightfully witty... unputdownable... brilliant . . . a novel written from the heart. Should be read for the sheer pleasure of reading." —The Pioneer "A craftsman of letters. Hilarious. Almost read it nonstop."--Khushwant Singh, author and columnist.