Author: I Allan Sealy
Publisher: Picador India
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 360
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0330412051
Description
The Brainfever Bird is an exquisite love story, a tale of international intrigue and biological weapons, a literary thriller bursting with life, illusion and wonder.
Lev is a man who has come down in the world. Once a biological weapons scientist, he is now a chauffeur in 'that new Russia where physicists wash windows and engineers drive trams'. So he decides to take his lethal knowledge abroad; to offer his services to a foreign government. He goes to India - and then he is robbed.
It is in a helpless state, alone and adrift in Delhi, that Lev meets Maya. Beautiful and different, Maya has been waiting for a man like Lev to walk into her life. For a few days an awkward romance blossoms between them. But then something terrible happens - something for which the Russian scientist is blamed.
PRAISE FOR AUTHOR'S EARLIER NOVEL - The Everest Hotel
Sealy's melodic prose is alive to every nuance of the lush landscape around him, one he populates with an intriguing tale about people's inability to connect.
- Sunday Times
A fascinating study of human foibles for every reader, bvut a sensory treat for lovers of this fascinating country.
- Daily Telegraph
Rich and evocative . . Sealy relives the sadness of this story with comic moments...Poetic descriptions bring to life the landscape of India: you can see the lush vegetation, smell the rice-fields and fruit, hear the birdsong.
- Independent
Delightfully odd and evocative.
- The Times