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The Beautiful and the Damned

A Portrait of the New India
by Siddhartha Deb
The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India. Faber & Faber. Sept. 2011. 272p. ISBN 9780865478626. $26.
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Deb grew up in northeastern India, won a fellowship to Columbia, published two novels plus lots of reviews and other pieces (e.g., Boston Globe, n + 1), then returned to India to work underground for the Guardian at a call center in New Delhi. He turned his experiences into this account of the massive contradictions of India, where BMWs idle before gentle cows. India's future matters, and as a novelist Deb should give his writing a narrative arc. Read with Patrick French's India: A Portrait, out in June.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Apr 01, 2011
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