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This is a debut novel from India of an utterly original kind. Joshi has found a style and a form in which to say new things about the Indian experience in a new manner. Like Roy, Joshi is doing something entirely fresh. The novel takes three generations of a Gujarati family and uses them to track the course of Indian history back to 1930 and forward into the first decades of the next century. The grandparents are disciples of Gandhi, smart, sarcastic and principled; they meet on a non-violent demonstration against British rule in Calcutta in the 1930s, fall in love while falling under the army's baton. Their only son, Paresh, our principal narrator, grows up to drift through life, torn in different directions all at once. In turn, he produces a daughter, Para, who is tomboyish, aggressive, martial, and, in her sequences in the book, a squadron leader in the Indian Air Force when, in the near future, India is at war with a Muslim Pakistani-Iranian alliance. She therefore kills people for a living and is the antithesis of her grandparents' principles of Gandhiesque non-violence, civil disobedience and passive resistance. This trajectory of Indian history from non-violence to belliger… (more)
User reviews
'The Last Jet Engine Laugh' is ostensibly a family saga covering three generations of the Bhatt family stretching from a period when India was on the cusp of independence from Britain to the near future; to 2030 when the country is at war with a
Paresh Bhatt, a once celebrated photographer who has spent much of his life in France before returning to live in India is at the centre of this book. He is writing backwards in time, the country has been devastated by interminable disputes with Pakistan which have included the use of nuclear and chemical weapons by both sides; waters are poisonous to drink, yet life goes on.
Paresh writes about the life of his parents, his own childhood and adult life, bringing a child, Para, into the world and how all of their fates have been entwined with that of India.
Joshi touches on a whole lot of themes including war, famine, shortages, political ineptitude but ultimately focuses on fact that in the future the lack of drinkable water and loneliness are likely to be India's biggest killers.
I found it a really difficult read. The main problem being that the timeline just isn't linear, instead it stops haphazardly over a period of roughly seventy years which simply left me confused.
Joshi can certainly write so I blame this, at least in part, on his editors. There are the bare bones of two if not three good books here but as a whole its a mish-mash that just doesn't work and left me disappointed.