Vertigo

Author: Ashok Banker
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 392
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143032348

Description

Twenty-something Jayesh Mehta lives in Bombay with his ailing, alcoholic mother, abandoned years ago by her Gujarati businessman husband. Torn between his sense of duty towards her and his love for Tuli, his demanding girlfriend, Jay struggles to make a successful career-A small-time client-servicing executive, he secretly dreams of becoming a copywriter some day. But survival is an art Jay has yet to learn, as he finds his ambitions and romantic desires ruthlessly stifled by the same city that nurtured them. First published in 1993, Vertigo, with its fierce narrative energy and intensity, has acquired cult status as the quintessential Bombay novel.

REVIEW

A genuine addition to Indian English writing, Vertigo, gives us a portrait of Bombay that has hardly, if ever, been written about, the pursuit of happiness, material wealth, and capital, as it is dreamt in Bombay, and also the dark underside of that dream.
-Amit Chaudhuri in The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature