Author: Rana Dasgupta
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 357
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788172238230
Description
Solo is a kaleidoscopic novel about the life and daydreams of Ulrich, a one-hundred-year-old man from Bulgaria.
Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine: a group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by their discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists could record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatized by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way.
Wondering if, unlike the hapless parrots, he has any wisdom to leave to the world, Ulrich embarks on an epic armchair journey through a century of violent politics, forbidden music, lost love and failed chemistry
Set in a country that has belonged sometimes to Asia and sometimes to Europe, Solo is a book about lost roots, broken traditions and wasted ambitions – and the ways human being overcome those failures.
COMMENTS
‘A novel of exceptional, astonishing strangeness, Solo confirms Rana Dasgupta as the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation.’
-SALMAN RUSHDIE