Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Mariner Books (2008), Edition: Reprint, 288 pages
Description
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.… (more)
Media reviews
The final story, “The Elephant God,” finds Alice Durand, a recent graduate of Brown University, teaching Indian “outsourcers” to speak with credible American accents. After she is stalked and then violated by one of her students, she realizes she must create her own “justice” to
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counter a stonewalling legal system hostile to young western women traveling alone. Whether they realize it or not, Theroux’s characters are all seekers, and all of them wind up on paths much different from those they originally imagined. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member msbaba
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
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 a 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!
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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 a 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!
Show Less
LibraryThing member ubaidd
Book Review - The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux
I'm not as much a fan of Paul Theroux' fiction as I am of his travel writings but I wanted to read The Elephanta Suite for its cover photograph. What's so special about the cover you ask? It shows a vista that has now been crudely obscured by an
I found the first novella weak but the denouement of the latter two is quite satisfying. Recommended.
I'm not as much a fan of Paul Theroux' fiction as I am of his travel writings but I wanted to read The Elephanta Suite for its cover photograph. What's so special about the cover you ask? It shows a vista that has now been crudely obscured by an
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ugly, if necessary flyover. The photograph shows Mohammed Ali Road, a center of Muslim life in Mumbai, scene of glorious mayhem, food and people, cars and scooters, everyone jostling for space. It is the neighborhood my dad grew up in and which I regularly visited all through my childhood. To the right is the Minara Masjid, where I have prayed with my dad, in the bottom right corner is Suleman Usman Mithaiwala, where I have shopped for sweets, and further down the street is Noble Opticians, my optometerists for twenty years. Unfortunately, Mohammed Ali Road has nothing to do with the book itself. The Elephanta Suite is a collection of three novellas, each set in a different section of India with only the slightest passing reference to each other. The three locations as separated by space as by culture. The first story takes place in an exotic mountainside spa, the second alternates between the posh hotels and seedy slums of Mumbai while the third unravels in Sai Baba's ashram and a call center in Bangalore. I'm not sure if I'm saying this as an interested party but I found Mr. Theroux' depiction of Indians less than fair. Admittedly, I don't have the perspective of an American in the Indian situations described by Mr. Theroux. However, the caricature of almost every Indian his American characters come across as money grubbing, self centered or sexually desperate seems quite harsh. The American characters are relatively more sympathetic, but no less pitiful - which begs the question, is this book just an exaggerated expression of Mr. Theroux' dour view of the world? I find it hard to conclude otherwise. I found the first novella weak but the denouement of the latter two is quite satisfying. Recommended.
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LibraryThing member gottadance
I loved the way these three seemingly unrelated stories intertwine and build upon each other. An entertaining and engaging read that invites ongoing inquiry into the colonial/post-colonial mindset at a time when many westerners imagine India holds all of the answers.
LibraryThing member Linus_Linus
In two words, Not bad.Paul Theroux’s latest novel, is actually a compilation of three novellas- each, a story at the Indo-american interface set in contemporary times. The first is rather a weak story of an American couple holidaying in an Indian spa; the second , perhaps the most intense of the
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three is a story of an American businessman forced to visit India because of his work and the last is about a young American backpacker. Interestingly, all the characters come to India with their own ideas, but find themselves drifting into first, and later, sucked by something inexplicable that would change them and their idea of India forever. The common pivotal motif in all the stories is sex, which takes different forms in different stories: an one-off, an affair/arrangement, a rape. In themselves, the stories are unremarkable but Paul must be credited for his efforts to break the stereotype of the Western impression of India; thankfully he doesnt hover around identity, diaspora, generation gap, new-found feminism, secularism etc which could be safely trusted(to be overdone) with the Indian writers. The stories, though built in rich and easily flowing prose lack a definitive identity, a not so surprising relevation when one looks too long at India. Perhaps, that is the reason why the book carries three novellas instead of a single novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member cameling
This is a thought provoking read. 3 different and interesting novellas of different lives in India. A American couple spend a few weeks at a luxurious spa in India. An American lawyer comes to India to negotiate contracts between American and Indian companies. A young woman comes to India and joins
In each of these stories, these individuals have preconceived ideas of what defines India. Each one will have their first impressions of India affirm their initial assumptions. Each one will start to experience India through the people they interact with and slowly they change and their impressions change. The interactions that make such a difference in these stories span the spectrum of the diversity of people in India. We are introduced to those in the service trade, prostitutes, ambitious executives, an elephant mahout, the spoiled rich and pimps among others. Theroux slowly peels the obvious away and starts to help us uncover subtleties in mannerism, ideology and culture on both sides, that of the foreigners who have immersed themselves to varying degrees in India, as well as that of the Indians themselves.
These individuals who came to India will not leave unchanged. Each journey is described with such pointed detail you're drawn to the characters.
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an ashram.In each of these stories, these individuals have preconceived ideas of what defines India. Each one will have their first impressions of India affirm their initial assumptions. Each one will start to experience India through the people they interact with and slowly they change and their impressions change. The interactions that make such a difference in these stories span the spectrum of the diversity of people in India. We are introduced to those in the service trade, prostitutes, ambitious executives, an elephant mahout, the spoiled rich and pimps among others. Theroux slowly peels the obvious away and starts to help us uncover subtleties in mannerism, ideology and culture on both sides, that of the foreigners who have immersed themselves to varying degrees in India, as well as that of the Indians themselves.
These individuals who came to India will not leave unchanged. Each journey is described with such pointed detail you're drawn to the characters.
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LibraryThing member Davida.Chazan
Three semi-related stories about India show us the less seemly side of the country. The prose is lush yet simple, and the characters well drawn. Moreover, it is obvious that Theroux both knows and loves India and everything that the characters go through seem realistic and authentic. The couple who
While it drags a touch in places, overall an interesting book - but not his finest.
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are drawn to the spa and its employees, the businessman who tries, but cannot ignore the seedier side of the city and the young woman staying at an ashram trying to escape her life. While it drags a touch in places, overall an interesting book - but not his finest.
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LibraryThing member Nycticebus
In these three slightly linked novellas, Theroux takes us beyond the usual culture shock stories, but yet the stories are not about India, only set in India. His characters are American tourists, not even expats, and because we readers must see the world as they do, it becomes difficult for Theroux
Meanwhile, the plots themselves strain under a strange tension. All three novellas seem at first to be ironic but relatively sympathetic to the protagonists, who are all one way or another blind not only to the realities of India but to their own needs and distorted relationships. But then the plots pick up speed and veer into the macabre. It’s like starting with Forster and ending with Saki. The endings are satisfying, but so obviously artful that the tales lose, in retrospect, any plausibility.
Maybe the lack of plausibility is a good thing, since Theroux's stereotypes (crafty Jains, violent Muslims, stupid nouveaux riches, etc), although updated to the current century, are still flat and ugly.
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to signal to us what they are misunderstanding or not seeing. It's the same problem Forster and many others faced when describing the foreign experience in India to an audience of foreigners who don't know any better. As a result, Theroux’s prose is at times overly expository, presumably because he can't expect an American reader to recognize place names, know about temple/mosque conflicts, Jains, etc. Additionally, one could tick with a pencil the places where Theroux must have realized that some detail was needed for plot later on and so added it in with a clunk.Meanwhile, the plots themselves strain under a strange tension. All three novellas seem at first to be ironic but relatively sympathetic to the protagonists, who are all one way or another blind not only to the realities of India but to their own needs and distorted relationships. But then the plots pick up speed and veer into the macabre. It’s like starting with Forster and ending with Saki. The endings are satisfying, but so obviously artful that the tales lose, in retrospect, any plausibility.
Maybe the lack of plausibility is a good thing, since Theroux's stereotypes (crafty Jains, violent Muslims, stupid nouveaux riches, etc), although updated to the current century, are still flat and ugly.
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LibraryThing member bibleblaster
Theroux is not...well...cheery, but at its best this reminded me a little of Graham Greene or the best of Somerset Maugham. What happens to folks when they step (or imagine that they can step...or are pushed) out of their normal lives?
LibraryThing member kerns222
Not a book to comfortably enjoy.
LibraryThing member burritapal
Audie Blunden and his wife Beth are staying in a lodge above a village in the foothills of the himalayas. It's called Agri, a former maharaja's residence, a baronial mansion and in the Bamboo Grove the spa building, the pool, the palm trees, the yoga Pavilion, glowing in spotlights, the whole place
Audie is rich, so this character feels entitled. He feels entitled to helping himself to women's bodies too, and feels no burden to his conscious to lying to them to get what he wants out of them.
"His love for Beth was sincere. He had said he'd loved these women, but the word never got out of the bedroom. He had desired them and could spend an entire afternoon in a hotel room with them, but it was an evaporating passion -- he shrank at the thought of sitting across the table from them for an hour to have a meal. In his life, though he had searched, he had never met a woman who felt the same, who could separate desire from love. The women he'd known combined these feelings. For them, desire was love, and it was also the promise of a future. Desire was hope, a house, children, a car, a vacation, new shoes, even grandchildren. But for him desire had a beginning and an end -- no middle, no future, only it's ungraspable evaporation. The end that seemed so natural to him was seen by the women as a betrayal. But worse than "I hate you" was that rejected face, that abandoned posture, the disappointment, the tears.
Shatoosh, made from the neck hair yanked out from a kind of antelope that is an endangered species, is a kind of scarf that rich women like to possess. Beth Blunden is no better of a character than her husband is. She goes to the front desk of the lodge and asks if they know where she can get a shatoosh. One of the workers, an ayurvedic doctor, takes them into the village below the lodge. This is where Beth can find her scarf made out of the hair yanked cruelly from the neck of an endangered species.
"After Dr nagaraj dismissed the driver, the three walked the rest of the way up the hill. Audie asked the cost of the scarves. Dr nagaraj seemed relieved and mentioned the price, and he smiled as $5,000 was counted into his hand. 'A great bargain, sir. And you are so lucky. This antelope is almost extinct.' "
Dwight huntsinger is a kind of business man that helps American Rich boys connect with the cheapest labor from india. Outsourcing jobs, is what it's called. It's the reason why the United States is turning into a third world country, And China is the New world superpower. He's the third despicable American character plundering india, in the author's book, because he can. He uses the Indian women, who give their bodies because they are desperate for money, and tries to kid himself that he truly cares about them.
"... How her father touched her -- the shame of it; how her mother beat her, blaming her, and her father sent her away to her auntie's village; how her auntie locked her in an unlit room with the grain sacks and the rats; how, when Indru went to the police, they didn't believe her; how the village boys threw bricks of cowshit at her, and when her uncle happened by to rescue her, he drove her on his motorbike to the river bank, where he dragged her through the bamboo.
'He touch me here, he touch me down here on my privates, he bite me with his teeth and call me dirty dog.'
they were harrowing stories, the more terrifying for the factual way she told them, lying on her back on the string bed, her fingertips grazing her body to indicate where she had been violated. She seemed to understand how they seized Dwight's attention and silenced him. And some evenings when he looked distracted, his gaze drifting to the window, sleepy and satisfied, she would prop herself on one elbow and drop her voice and show him a scar on her wrist, whitish on her dark skin.
'One Uncle tie me with ropes. He say, "is a game.' I be so scare. He take my sari. He say, "I no hurt you."
And what she told him next in that soft voice was more powerful to him than the racket at the window. He took a deep breath and gagged and thought, not a success at all -- it's a failure.
The smell of failure in India wasn't only Indian failure. It was a universal smell of human weakness, the stink of humanity, his own failure too. His firm of lawyers was bringing so many people down."
Dwight's own marriage was a short failure.
"At last he saw his divorce as a triumph. No one else did, which was another reason he was happy to be in india. Perhaps failure was the severest kind of truth. His work was a punishment and a wrecking ball: he took manufacturing away from American companies and brought it to india. The American manufacturers hated him -- and they failed; the Indian companies were cynical, knowing that if they could not produce goods cheaply enough, they would be rejected. Every success meant someone's failure. He could not take any pride in that process: he was part of it."
Listen to this disgusting scene:
"The way she got to her feet in pretty Little stages, first lifting her head to face him, tossing her braid aside, then raising herself by digging her fingers into his knees for balance, almost undid him. Then she was peeling off his shirt as he approached the charpoy. He watched her shimmy out of her dress, using her shoulders. When her dress dropped to her ankles she stepped out of it, kicking the door closed with one foot.
'I know what you want,' she said as he took her head, cupping her ears, and moved it like a melon on his lap."
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crowning the summit of the Hill. Audie is rich, so this character feels entitled. He feels entitled to helping himself to women's bodies too, and feels no burden to his conscious to lying to them to get what he wants out of them.
"His love for Beth was sincere. He had said he'd loved these women, but the word never got out of the bedroom. He had desired them and could spend an entire afternoon in a hotel room with them, but it was an evaporating passion -- he shrank at the thought of sitting across the table from them for an hour to have a meal. In his life, though he had searched, he had never met a woman who felt the same, who could separate desire from love. The women he'd known combined these feelings. For them, desire was love, and it was also the promise of a future. Desire was hope, a house, children, a car, a vacation, new shoes, even grandchildren. But for him desire had a beginning and an end -- no middle, no future, only it's ungraspable evaporation. The end that seemed so natural to him was seen by the women as a betrayal. But worse than "I hate you" was that rejected face, that abandoned posture, the disappointment, the tears.
Shatoosh, made from the neck hair yanked out from a kind of antelope that is an endangered species, is a kind of scarf that rich women like to possess. Beth Blunden is no better of a character than her husband is. She goes to the front desk of the lodge and asks if they know where she can get a shatoosh. One of the workers, an ayurvedic doctor, takes them into the village below the lodge. This is where Beth can find her scarf made out of the hair yanked cruelly from the neck of an endangered species.
"After Dr nagaraj dismissed the driver, the three walked the rest of the way up the hill. Audie asked the cost of the scarves. Dr nagaraj seemed relieved and mentioned the price, and he smiled as $5,000 was counted into his hand. 'A great bargain, sir. And you are so lucky. This antelope is almost extinct.' "
Dwight huntsinger is a kind of business man that helps American Rich boys connect with the cheapest labor from india. Outsourcing jobs, is what it's called. It's the reason why the United States is turning into a third world country, And China is the New world superpower. He's the third despicable American character plundering india, in the author's book, because he can. He uses the Indian women, who give their bodies because they are desperate for money, and tries to kid himself that he truly cares about them.
"... How her father touched her -- the shame of it; how her mother beat her, blaming her, and her father sent her away to her auntie's village; how her auntie locked her in an unlit room with the grain sacks and the rats; how, when Indru went to the police, they didn't believe her; how the village boys threw bricks of cowshit at her, and when her uncle happened by to rescue her, he drove her on his motorbike to the river bank, where he dragged her through the bamboo.
'He touch me here, he touch me down here on my privates, he bite me with his teeth and call me dirty dog.'
they were harrowing stories, the more terrifying for the factual way she told them, lying on her back on the string bed, her fingertips grazing her body to indicate where she had been violated. She seemed to understand how they seized Dwight's attention and silenced him. And some evenings when he looked distracted, his gaze drifting to the window, sleepy and satisfied, she would prop herself on one elbow and drop her voice and show him a scar on her wrist, whitish on her dark skin.
'One Uncle tie me with ropes. He say, "is a game.' I be so scare. He take my sari. He say, "I no hurt you."
And what she told him next in that soft voice was more powerful to him than the racket at the window. He took a deep breath and gagged and thought, not a success at all -- it's a failure.
The smell of failure in India wasn't only Indian failure. It was a universal smell of human weakness, the stink of humanity, his own failure too. His firm of lawyers was bringing so many people down."
Dwight's own marriage was a short failure.
"At last he saw his divorce as a triumph. No one else did, which was another reason he was happy to be in india. Perhaps failure was the severest kind of truth. His work was a punishment and a wrecking ball: he took manufacturing away from American companies and brought it to india. The American manufacturers hated him -- and they failed; the Indian companies were cynical, knowing that if they could not produce goods cheaply enough, they would be rejected. Every success meant someone's failure. He could not take any pride in that process: he was part of it."
Listen to this disgusting scene:
"The way she got to her feet in pretty Little stages, first lifting her head to face him, tossing her braid aside, then raising herself by digging her fingers into his knees for balance, almost undid him. Then she was peeling off his shirt as he approached the charpoy. He watched her shimmy out of her dress, using her shoulders. When her dress dropped to her ankles she stepped out of it, kicking the door closed with one foot.
'I know what you want,' she said as he took her head, cupping her ears, and moved it like a melon on his lap."
Show Less
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Original language
English