Author: Sanjay Nigam
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 350
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670049948
Description
Sonny Seth is a brilliant, rebellious medical resident at a New York City hospital that services a community of eccentric expatriates from India. His most demanding patient and trusted confidant is a deathly ill but amusingly wise high-level Indian government official-known only as the Transplanted Man because virtually every organ in his body has been replaced.
Trying to solve his patient’s ballooning afflictions, Sonny faces demons of his own in a soul-searching journey that delves into questions about East and West, the meaning of expatriation, and life itself. Along the way Sonny becomes involved with Gwen, a bibliophilic English nurse, Dr Ranjan, an insomniac scientist, a Bollywood superstar seeking the spotlight in politics, a psychotherapist incessantly mistaken for a New Age guru, a chef trying to invent the perfect fusion cuisine, an orderly who wants to sing in Hindi films, and an endearing homeless man who becomes the neighbourhood’s man tourist attraction.
Transplanted Man is a novel about love, sleep and homeland, weaving together the bewilderment of the immigrant experience with ideas about the philosophy of modern medicine. Nigam tackles complex issues in luminous, humorous prose, portraying a world of assimilation and the humanity that unites us all.
REVIEWS
Transplanted Man establishes Nigam as a major voice in contemporary Indian-American literature.
-Publishers Weekly
A work of considerable intellectual and imaginative energy.
-Washington Post
Bravo to Nigam for moving South Asian literature into the 21st century.
-Asian Week
Spectacular and moving…I read this novel late into the night and finished it early the next morning.
-Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Time, Love, Memory
Contents
DAYS AND NIGHTS
Stuck
Visiting Hours
Unhealed Wounds
Sonny’s Theories
In the Room Across the Hall
STATES OF AWARENESS
Dreams of Sleep
That Butterfly!
Performances
Johny Walker
Fusion
Questions
The Show
Double Takes
HIGHS AND LOWS
Epiphanies
At the Movies
The Post for the Ism
Dirge for an Insomniac
A Tale of Three Kidneys
COMPLICATIONS
Hoopla
The Perfect Pose
Beeps and Buzzers
Of Calls and Callings
A Weird Night
Liquid Gold
SLINGS AND ARROWS
Kismet
Making Sense of It All
Bad Dreams
Missing Goddess
Ancestral Voices
RESOLUTIONS
Picks of Conscience
Pacts with Destiny
Of Love and Lust
HERE, THERE-ELSEWHERE
Aftermaths
The Great Mouse Robbery
The Rebirth of Venus
Dosti
Skipped Beats
Unstuck
Acknowledgments