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We That Are Young
The story of a billionaire family dynasty, led by a gold-plated madman, stewed in corruption, mired in violence, riven by infighting, deception and lies… The resonances will be there for anyone who knows King Lear - not to mention anyone struggling to come to terms with the new world order - from the rise of the religious right wing in India to the Trump dynasty in the United States. This is not just Shakespeare repurposed for our times – it’s a novel that urgently matters in 2017, and which will resonate for years to come.
Jivan Singh, the bastard scion of the Devraj family, returns to his childhood home after a long absence – only to witness the unexpected resignation of the ageing patriarch from the vast corporation he founded, the Devraj Company. On the same day, Sita, Devraj’s youngest daughter, absconds – refusing to submit to the marriage her father wants for her. Meanwhile, Radha and Gargi, Sita’s older sisters, must deal with the fallout… And so begins a brutal, deathly struggle for power, ranging over the luxury hotels and spas of New Delhi and Amritsar, the Palaces and slums of Napurthala, to Srinagar, Kashmir.
Told in astonishing prose – a great torrent of words and imagery – We that are young is a modern-day King Lear that bursts with energy and fierce, beautifully measured rage. Set against the backdrop of the anti-corruption protests in 2011–2012, it provides startling insights into modern India, the clash of youth and age, the hectic pace of life in one of the world’s fastest growing economies – and the ever-present spectre of death. More than that, this is a novel about the human heart. And its breaking point.
Jivan Singh, the bastard scion of the Devraj family, returns to his childhood home after a long absence – only to witness the unexpected resignation of the ageing patriarch from the vast corporation he founded, the Devraj Company. On the same day, Sita, Devraj’s youngest daughter, absconds – refusing to submit to the marriage her father wants for her. Meanwhile, Radha and Gargi, Sita’s older sisters, must deal with the fallout… And so begins a brutal, deathly struggle for power, ranging over the luxury hotels and spas of New Delhi and Amritsar, the Palaces and slums of Napurthala, to Srinagar, Kashmir.
Told in astonishing prose – a great torrent of words and imagery – We that are young is a modern-day King Lear that bursts with energy and fierce, beautifully measured rage. Set against the backdrop of the anti-corruption protests in 2011–2012, it provides startling insights into modern India, the clash of youth and age, the hectic pace of life in one of the world’s fastest growing economies – and the ever-present spectre of death. More than that, this is a novel about the human heart. And its breaking point.
553 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2017
About the author
Preti Taneja
10 books66 followersPraise for WE THAT ARE YOUNG
WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2018
Sarah Perry, chair of judges, said:
“Samira, Chris and myself were absolutely unanimous in our love and admiration for this novel, whose scope, ambition, skill and wisdom was, quite simply, awe-inspiring … all three of us sat together, shaking our heads, saying, ‘If this is her first novel, what extraordinary work will come next?’”
'Revelatory. One of the most exquisite and original novels of the year.' - Sunday Times.
'Looks to hold a mirror to our times.' Observer Summer Picks.
'A masterpiece' - The Spectator
'Fierce, freewheeling' - Guardian
'An Instant Classic' - The Times of India
Praise for Kumkum Malhotra:
With its beautifully sculpted surfaces and terrifying depths, this novella literally took my breath away.'
- Maureen Freely
'Preti Taneja is a writer to watch, no doubt about it.'
- Deborah Levy
'Preti Taneja’s beautiful novella is evocative, elegant, sparse and yet enormously full. A story that, to many of us, might seem ‘other’, becomes inclusive and deeply engaging, all of it woven from a single loose thread.'
- Stella Duffy
Preti Taneja's talent lies in doing what all the greatest stories do: creating from the specific - one cast of characters, one place, one culture - a deeply moving universal, one that is perfectly paced and which, once read, lodges itself in the innermost rooms of your heart.
- Tania Hershman
WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2018
Sarah Perry, chair of judges, said:
“Samira, Chris and myself were absolutely unanimous in our love and admiration for this novel, whose scope, ambition, skill and wisdom was, quite simply, awe-inspiring … all three of us sat together, shaking our heads, saying, ‘If this is her first novel, what extraordinary work will come next?’”
'Revelatory. One of the most exquisite and original novels of the year.' - Sunday Times.
'Looks to hold a mirror to our times.' Observer Summer Picks.
'A masterpiece' - The Spectator
'Fierce, freewheeling' - Guardian
'An Instant Classic' - The Times of India
Praise for Kumkum Malhotra:
With its beautifully sculpted surfaces and terrifying depths, this novella literally took my breath away.'
- Maureen Freely
'Preti Taneja is a writer to watch, no doubt about it.'
- Deborah Levy
'Preti Taneja’s beautiful novella is evocative, elegant, sparse and yet enormously full. A story that, to many of us, might seem ‘other’, becomes inclusive and deeply engaging, all of it woven from a single loose thread.'
- Stella Duffy
Preti Taneja's talent lies in doing what all the greatest stories do: creating from the specific - one cast of characters, one place, one culture - a deeply moving universal, one that is perfectly paced and which, once read, lodges itself in the innermost rooms of your heart.
- Tania Hershman
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January 18, 2020
Now deservedly shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize, alongside the outstanding shortlist for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize for 'gorgeous prose and hardcore literary fiction' from small, independent presses.
Edgar: The weight of this sad time we must obey.
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most. We that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
King Lear, Act 5 Scene 3
Postscript to my review: Disappointed this missed out on the Booker, particularly to Arundhati Roy's messy The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Taneja's novel refutes Roy's claim (via one of her characters) that it in Kashmir, "there is too much blood for good literature." However delighted to see the favourable coverage in the Sunday Times: thetim.es/2waJwdF ("one of the year’s most original novels, an exquisite retelling of King Lear set in modern New Delhi ... Revelatory ... urgent and irresistible").
Preti Taneja’s We That Are Young is King Lear reinterpreted for the 21st Century and relocated to India.
It is published by the wonderful Galley Beggar Press, the press that published A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, who published the most strikingly original novel I read in 2016 Forbidden Line, and whose admirable, self-declared, mission is “to produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature’, books that really are ‘hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose’.
The last lines of King Lear, and the title of this novel, link with India, the world’s largest democracy, also being cited as the world’s youngest nation. The ILO report that two-thirds of the population are under the age of 35. Perhaps more pertinently for the country’s economic development, the Indian government’s own projections have the country in 2020 with an average age of 29, and a demographic bulge of 64% of its population in the working age group of 15-59.
Taneja’s wonderful transposition of Lear not only pays tribute to, and increases our appreciation of, Shakespeare’s original, but creates a memorable and revealing portrait of this modern India. She also manages beautifully the difficult task of largely following a well-known and pre-established plot and cast of characters, but at the same time creating an intriguing, complex but highly absorbing story of her own.
“King Lear” becomes Devraj Bapuji, billionaire owner of the Devraj Company, a ubiquitous conglomerate.
As the novel opens his youngest and favourite daughter Sita (the Cordelia character) has just returned to India, having graduated from Cambridge.
Devraj announces his desire to split his 60% shareholding in the Company between Sita and her two older sisters Gargu (Goneril), married to the rather passive Surenda (Albany) and Radha (Regan), married to the much more ambituous Bubu (Cornwall).
But asked to express their gratitude for Devraj’s gift, Sita, as Cordelia, declines to join in her sisters’ flattery:
Cordelia: Nothing, my Lord.
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1
At the same time Jivan (Edmund), the illegitimate son of Devraj’s right-hand-man Ranjit Singh (Gloucester) has returned from the United States after his’s mother death. Jivan was Ranjit’s favourite and a playchild of Devraj’s daughters, but was sent, almost exiled, with his mother, 15 years ago to America when his illegitimacy became an embarrassment.
Jivan’s initial impressions of a Dehli he has not seen for 15 years – an India that has become younger as he has become older – set the scene for the novel’s early acts:
Jivan immediately sets out to undermine the relationship between Ranjit and his one legitimate son, Jeet (Edgar), a homosexual in a country where this has only just been legalised (and was soon to be criminalised once again). Jeet flees his privileged life and reinvents himself as Rudra (Poor Tom), a Naph seer, living in a slum set around a large rubbish dump in the shadow to one of the Company’s luxury hotels.
Other key characters include
- Devraj’s Hundred (Lear’s hundred servants) – a cadre of selected young high-fliers from the Company, but whose riotous behaviour displeases Gargu and Radha.
- the sinister and violent Uppal (Oswald), Gargu’s chief of staff.
- Kritik Singh (Kent) the Company’s Head of Security, second only to Ranjit in influence, but who is rapidly dismissed by Devraj when he argues against his decision to disinherit Sita.
- Kritik’s own 2nd in command, Kashyap, who fills the Caius role, Taneja eschewing Shakespeare’s rather implausible device of having Kent simply reappear in disguise.
Indeed via Jivan’s musing on Indian TV serials, the author gets in what is hard not to see as a cheeky dig at Shakespeare’s plots:
But Lear – and this novel – certainly don’t have happily-ever-after ending. Indeed We That Are Young is full of the brutal realities of 21st Century life – the massive gap between the rich and poor, the depths of poverty, corruption, drug abuse, sexism, homophobia, religious and ethnic tensions, and the tensions in Kashmir.
The role of the Fool is played by Devraj’s elderly mother, a Kashmiri Pandit, whose mental health has never really recovered from the events of January 1990, when her husband and Devraj’s wife were both killed in their home-town of Srinigar in Kashmir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_...).
As Sita, in his view, betrays him and his other two daughters move to seize control of the company, Devraj starts to lose his own sanity. Uppal reports to Gargi:
Gargi installs herself in Devraj’s place and his office, replacing his own photos of himself meeting various world leaders (Nehru, Thatcher, Bush, Mrs Ghandi) with one of (the real-world artist) Dayanita Singh’s Dream Villa photographs of a cityscape:
Devraj undergoes a Damascene conversion to the cause of the very workers on whose labour and sacrifices he has built his empire, and as the battle for control of the empire rages the scene moves from Dehli to Ranjit’s luxury hotel (Gloucester’s castle) in Amritsar, and then the action converges back to Srinigar, where the Company, in violation of rules forbidding outsiders from owning property in Kashmir, are building the ultimate luxury hotel (initially inspired by Devraj wishing to reclaim his heritage).
The part of Dover cliffs is played by Amarnath Peak:
The novel is narrated in the third-person but the perspective and focus shifts between the five main young characters, from Jivan to Gargi, Radha, Jeet and Sita, with interspersed first-person rambling thoughts from the highly confused Devraj (as he lies in the ruins of his former family home in Srinigar, where the plot reaches its tragic denouement). The device effectively combines a linear plotline with a circular narrative, allowing us to appreciate (rather more than in the original) each character’s motivations.
And Jeet echoes Edgar’s closing speech with one of his own:
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Galley Beggar for the ARC.
Edgar: The weight of this sad time we must obey.
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most. We that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
King Lear, Act 5 Scene 3
Postscript to my review: Disappointed this missed out on the Booker, particularly to Arundhati Roy's messy The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Taneja's novel refutes Roy's claim (via one of her characters) that it in Kashmir, "there is too much blood for good literature." However delighted to see the favourable coverage in the Sunday Times: thetim.es/2waJwdF ("one of the year’s most original novels, an exquisite retelling of King Lear set in modern New Delhi ... Revelatory ... urgent and irresistible").
Preti Taneja’s We That Are Young is King Lear reinterpreted for the 21st Century and relocated to India.
It is published by the wonderful Galley Beggar Press, the press that published A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, who published the most strikingly original novel I read in 2016 Forbidden Line, and whose admirable, self-declared, mission is “to produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature’, books that really are ‘hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose’.
The last lines of King Lear, and the title of this novel, link with India, the world’s largest democracy, also being cited as the world’s youngest nation. The ILO report that two-thirds of the population are under the age of 35. Perhaps more pertinently for the country’s economic development, the Indian government’s own projections have the country in 2020 with an average age of 29, and a demographic bulge of 64% of its population in the working age group of 15-59.
Taneja’s wonderful transposition of Lear not only pays tribute to, and increases our appreciation of, Shakespeare’s original, but creates a memorable and revealing portrait of this modern India. She also manages beautifully the difficult task of largely following a well-known and pre-established plot and cast of characters, but at the same time creating an intriguing, complex but highly absorbing story of her own.
“King Lear” becomes Devraj Bapuji, billionaire owner of the Devraj Company, a ubiquitous conglomerate.
As the novel opens his youngest and favourite daughter Sita (the Cordelia character) has just returned to India, having graduated from Cambridge.
Devraj announces his desire to split his 60% shareholding in the Company between Sita and her two older sisters Gargu (Goneril), married to the rather passive Surenda (Albany) and Radha (Regan), married to the much more ambituous Bubu (Cornwall).
But asked to express their gratitude for Devraj’s gift, Sita, as Cordelia, declines to join in her sisters’ flattery:
Papaji mujhe kuch nahi bolna hai, she says: she holds up her empty hands: there is nothing but air in between.
Father (respectfully) I don't want to say anything.
Cordelia: Nothing, my Lord.
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1
At the same time Jivan (Edmund), the illegitimate son of Devraj’s right-hand-man Ranjit Singh (Gloucester) has returned from the United States after his’s mother death. Jivan was Ranjit’s favourite and a playchild of Devraj’s daughters, but was sent, almost exiled, with his mother, 15 years ago to America when his illegitimacy became an embarrassment.
Jivan’s initial impressions of a Dehli he has not seen for 15 years – an India that has become younger as he has become older – set the scene for the novel’s early acts:
He can make out flyovers strewn like necklaces across the city, jewelled with billboards promising reincarnation in this life, and ways to afford it, because it must be achieved. There will be ads for new cars, mobiles, modified milk for bachchas’ bone strength and protein powder for abs; ads for Company hotels full of romance, for new detergents and washing machines. For flour to make perfect chapattis: pictures of fat young execs and good Indian girls promising hot married sex with their homemade bread. Now they are cruising over acres of flat white rooftops dotted with satellite dishes, hundreds of ears all listening for his arrival.
The movement of the Bentley: its preserved hush. As if Jivan is back in the crematorium, watching the coffin glide towards the incinerator. He has to have a short, brutal battle with the lump in his throat. The cold air makes him sniff. Only girls get sick-sick. The last thing Ranjit said to him before he was put in the car and sent to America. Jivan sniffs again. His father and Kritik Sahib do not look at him.
[...]
The sounds from the road are muted, the car windows frame and colour everything sepia. Scenes from old India reel out before him, comforting after the airport. A sabzji wala shambles down the lane, his cart loaded with wrinkled root vegetables dug up from centuries ago, whole families stacked onto mopeds, eight legs dangling over the sides. There are women balancing bricks and bundles, walking barefoot on the broken sidewalks. Half-naked children grin to each other as they clean their teeth with dirty fingers, their hair in helmets of crazy around their heads. All of it seen as if from far, far away, punctuated by Mercedes and 4x4s, Toyota, Honda, all the big boys. Jivan takes in these shining beasts as visions from a future-possible; at the same time, he wants to shout freeze-frame! He’s thinking, How long has the party been going on? Why didn’t you invite me? There are even new buses with doors that fully close. But the trucks still say Horn Please! in fading yellows and pinks, and everyone still drives as if they don’t need sight. There are still a few white cows standing dumb as temple paintings, white against red walls – this, at least, has not changed.
Jivan immediately sets out to undermine the relationship between Ranjit and his one legitimate son, Jeet (Edgar), a homosexual in a country where this has only just been legalised (and was soon to be criminalised once again). Jeet flees his privileged life and reinvents himself as Rudra (Poor Tom), a Naph seer, living in a slum set around a large rubbish dump in the shadow to one of the Company’s luxury hotels.
Other key characters include
- Devraj’s Hundred (Lear’s hundred servants) – a cadre of selected young high-fliers from the Company, but whose riotous behaviour displeases Gargu and Radha.
- the sinister and violent Uppal (Oswald), Gargu’s chief of staff.
- Kritik Singh (Kent) the Company’s Head of Security, second only to Ranjit in influence, but who is rapidly dismissed by Devraj when he argues against his decision to disinherit Sita.
- Kritik’s own 2nd in command, Kashyap, who fills the Caius role, Taneja eschewing Shakespeare’s rather implausible device of having Kent simply reappear in disguise.
Indeed via Jivan’s musing on Indian TV serials, the author gets in what is hard not to see as a cheeky dig at Shakespeare’s plots:
Jivan used to watch these hokey Indian serials on Star Plus TV, sitting with Ma in the afternoons when he got in from school. She loved them all: the family dramas with cardboard villains and handsome heroes, non-stop cases of mistaken identity, masters for servants, good girls for bad. Brothers disguised as each other, lovingly beating sisters, wives and mothers-in-law fighting over sons. In the end the good would get rich and the bad were punished. The lovers would be united with parental blessing, kneeling for hands to be raised over their heads in benediction, the parents would kneel and beg their children to bless them right back. It was always happily-ever-after-the-end.
But Lear – and this novel – certainly don’t have happily-ever-after ending. Indeed We That Are Young is full of the brutal realities of 21st Century life – the massive gap between the rich and poor, the depths of poverty, corruption, drug abuse, sexism, homophobia, religious and ethnic tensions, and the tensions in Kashmir.
The role of the Fool is played by Devraj’s elderly mother, a Kashmiri Pandit, whose mental health has never really recovered from the events of January 1990, when her husband and Devraj’s wife were both killed in their home-town of Srinigar in Kashmir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_...).
As Sita, in his view, betrays him and his other two daughters move to seize control of the company, Devraj starts to lose his own sanity. Uppal reports to Gargi:
- It is your father, Gargi Ma'am
Oh God. What now?
- He went to the studio. He ordered the women to stop packing. Ten of the Hundred came with him, and they took Sita Ma'am wedding ladoos. For cricket.
She lets out a bark of shocked laughter. Drips of Coke spill and settle on her hands like Bapuji's liver spots. She licks them.
- What? Why are you not making sure he's not doing any nautanki?
- Gargi Ma'am this is not masti. There are ladoo all over the lawn, all over the jubilee garden. Stuck on the rose bushes also. You know this time I think he has truly gone mad.
Gargi installs herself in Devraj’s place and his office, replacing his own photos of himself meeting various world leaders (Nehru, Thatcher, Bush, Mrs Ghandi) with one of (the real-world artist) Dayanita Singh’s Dream Villa photographs of a cityscape:
Devraj undergoes a Damascene conversion to the cause of the very workers on whose labour and sacrifices he has built his empire, and as the battle for control of the empire rages the scene moves from Dehli to Ranjit’s luxury hotel (Gloucester’s castle) in Amritsar, and then the action converges back to Srinigar, where the Company, in violation of rules forbidding outsiders from owning property in Kashmir, are building the ultimate luxury hotel (initially inspired by Devraj wishing to reclaim his heritage).
The part of Dover cliffs is played by Amarnath Peak:
The novel is narrated in the third-person but the perspective and focus shifts between the five main young characters, from Jivan to Gargi, Radha, Jeet and Sita, with interspersed first-person rambling thoughts from the highly confused Devraj (as he lies in the ruins of his former family home in Srinigar, where the plot reaches its tragic denouement). The device effectively combines a linear plotline with a circular narrative, allowing us to appreciate (rather more than in the original) each character’s motivations.
And Jeet echoes Edgar’s closing speech with one of his own:
We that believe in India shining. We that are the youngest, the fastest, the democracy, the economy, the global Super Power coming soon to a cinema near you, we, hum panch, that are the five cousins of the five great rivers, everybody our brother-sister-lover, we that our divine: the echo of the ancient heroes of the old time, we that fight, we that are hungry, so, so hungry, we that are young! We that our jigging on the brink of ruin; we that are washed in the filth of corruption, chaal, so what? Aise hi Hota hai: we that are a force all that is natural - slow - death to Muslims, gays, chi-chi women in their skin-tights, hai! We that sit picnicking on the edge of our crumbling civilisation, we that party with shots and more shots, more shots as the world burns beneath us, as the dog barks, as the cockroaches crow, as the old eat their young and the young whip their elders all wearing the birth marks of respect, we that present only the shadow of ourselves behind our painted smiles, we that protest for the right to drink whisky-sours served to our beds at noon, we that eat our beef with chopsticks, we that twist tongues to suit our dear selves, we that worship the ancient religion of Lakshmi, of Shiva, of wealth creation and ultimate destruction, we that will be born strong in the next life and in a party that never ends, we that are the future of this planet, we that begin with this beloved India, will endure, yes it all belongs to us, and we will eat it all! All of it is ours, we that our India and no longer slaves: We that are young!
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Galley Beggar for the ARC.
May 20, 2020
NOW DESERVEDLY THE WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
TO FOLLOW ITS SHORTLISING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE (for which I was a judge)
Galley Beggar Press is a small publisher responsible which aims to produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature and which declares an aim to publish books that are hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose – a description which has been taken as the criteria for the Republic Of Consciousness prize.
Its most striking success to date has been in being prepared to publish Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing which had taken 9 years to find a publisher and of course went on to win the Bailey’s Prize.
“We That Are Young” is a debut novel by Preti Taneja a human rights advocate and literary academic. Between 2014-16 she held a Post Doc position at Queen Mary, University of London and Warwick University, working on Shakespeare performances in relation to human rights abuses and in humanitarian situations
This novel flows directly from her joint interests – and is explicitly a re-telling of King Lear set in India in the early 2010’s against a background of the 2011-12 anti-corruption protests (which form very much more of the foreground in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness).
Galley Beggar Press’s co-founder has commented much like our author Eimear McBride – when Preti’s novel was first submitted to us, it came with a history of ecstatic rejections from editors, who almost universally felt that her writing was extraordinary but too ‘tricksy’ to be a commercial success.
The book’s title is taken from the closing speech in King Lear (attributed to Albany or to Edgar in the two key versions of the play):
In the author’s words While writing We That Are Young I worked in New Delhi and Kashmir, and spoke to many people from different castes, class backgrounds and religions about the feverish times they felt they were living in. The title of my book comes from the end of Shakespeare's play, and evokes the power of the fact that India is the world's youngest and fastest growing democracy
The key protagonists in the book (and their King Lear counterparts) are:
Devraj Bapuji (King Lear), billionaire owner of the eponymous Devraj Conglomerate and his daughters: the eldest Gargu (Goneril) married to the stolid Surenda (Albany); the more flighty and fashionable Radha (Regan) married to the more ambituous Bubu (Cornwall); the youngest Sita (Cordelia) an environmentally aware Cambridge student.
Devraj’s right hand man Ranjit Singh (Gloucester), his gay heir Jeet (Edgar) and his illegitimate son Jivan (Edmund).
The book opens with Jivan returning from imposed exile in America after the death of his mother (Devraj’s singer mistress) and reacquainting himself with his childhood friends Gargu and Radha, at the same time as a returning party arranged for Sita at her graduation. At a lunch on the Day of Jivan’s return, Devraj announces he is splitting the company between his daughters, only for Sita’s refusal to pay homege to him leading to him renouncing her inheritance; Jivan meanwhile sows seeds of mistrust between his father and brother – all of this of course a character by character re-enactment of the basic plot of “King Lear” and which is also followed by King-Lear echoing discord between Devraj and his Head of Security Kritik (Kent) and then a wedge between Devraj and his daughters due to the behaviour of Devraj’s hundreds (Lear’s retinue of a hundred servants) a hand selected cadre of high fliers.
The book is written in five lengthy, third party point of view sections – concentrating in turn on the viewpoints of Jivan, Gargi, Radha, Jeet and Sita. The length of these sections and the use of a continuous present tense (as well as the liberal interspersing of only partially translated Hindi in the book) can at times make this an exhausting as well as an exhilarating read. I was at times reminded of the "assault on the senses" that many Westerners use to describe their first visit to India.
One of the interesting choices in the novel is to open with sympathetic accounts of the actions and motivations of those – Jivan, Gargi and Radha – whose King Lear equivalents – Edmund, Goneril and Regan are effectively unambiguously villians. The effect of this as others have pointed out in their reviews, is to give a novel which while clearly borrowing heavily from King Lear, also gives back some added perspective to that play, particularly around the motivations of the full group of protagonists.
The sections are intercut with some first party ramblings from Devraj – who early on speculates:
The references to “most winning stories” seems to directly reference the writing of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy (both of whom feature pickle factories in their most famous novels) while also implicitly acknowledging the way in which much of modern Indian literary writing draws heavily both on the style of Dickens and implicitly on the implausible plots of Shakespeare; and the same could be said to be true for Indian TV
There are two very distinct literary choices that the author makes in this book – both of which struck me as slightly false on a first read, but as thoroughly justified on a second.
The first is referenced above – the frequent use of many half-translated (or untranslated) not just Hindi words, but full sentences. Initially this is to convey the explicit disorientation that the Americanised Devraj first experiences on his return to His homeland, as he struggles to recall his childhood Hindi, but it is continued throughout the book. I understand from interviews with the author that her aim was to convey something of the reality of the world for her and many of her friends – living in Hindi speaking households in English speaking countries, and therefore simultaneously inhabiting both linguistic worlds. Even further than this though is an acknowledgment of the way in which both languages have inspired and fed the other over time. As Devraj notes when addressing the reader:
The second was the choice to follow not just the main plot, but often the dialogue of King Lear, and more specifically to choose to convey some of the more dramatic parts of the original plot (the putting in the stocks of Lear’s messenger, the apocalyptic storm) and those that are just odd (the gouging of Gloucester's eyes, the Dover cliffs bluffed suicide scene) literally and not in a more imaginative and figurative sense. However again I now appreciate that this choice is in many ways fundamental to the author’s very conception of this novel – her realisation that concepts and events which render King Lear strange to a modern Western reader (the extreme patriarchy; the use of Lear's fortune as what is effectively dowry; the fundamental conflict of ambition, family and state; unchecked state violence and civil conflict; extremes of class/caste; the abuse of domestic servants) can be understood in a modern context when transplanted across the world.
Just as King Lear examines the violence that flowed from Lear's partriarchy and his forced and ill-thought through division of his Kingdom between his two daughters, so We That Are Young could be said to examine the effects of British colonialism and the long lasting impacts of the violence and division that flowed from Partition.
Overall a vibrant and wonderful novel.
My thanks to Galley Beggar Press for the ARC.
TO FOLLOW ITS SHORTLISING FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE (for which I was a judge)
Galley Beggar Press is a small publisher responsible which aims to produce and support beautiful books and a vibrant, eclectic, risk-taking range of literature and which declares an aim to publish books that are hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose – a description which has been taken as the criteria for the Republic Of Consciousness prize.
Its most striking success to date has been in being prepared to publish Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing which had taken 9 years to find a publisher and of course went on to win the Bailey’s Prize.
“We That Are Young” is a debut novel by Preti Taneja a human rights advocate and literary academic. Between 2014-16 she held a Post Doc position at Queen Mary, University of London and Warwick University, working on Shakespeare performances in relation to human rights abuses and in humanitarian situations
This novel flows directly from her joint interests – and is explicitly a re-telling of King Lear set in India in the early 2010’s against a background of the 2011-12 anti-corruption protests (which form very much more of the foreground in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness).
Galley Beggar Press’s co-founder has commented much like our author Eimear McBride – when Preti’s novel was first submitted to us, it came with a history of ecstatic rejections from editors, who almost universally felt that her writing was extraordinary but too ‘tricksy’ to be a commercial success.
The book’s title is taken from the closing speech in King Lear (attributed to Albany or to Edgar in the two key versions of the play):
The weight of this sad time we must obey.
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most. We that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
In the author’s words While writing We That Are Young I worked in New Delhi and Kashmir, and spoke to many people from different castes, class backgrounds and religions about the feverish times they felt they were living in. The title of my book comes from the end of Shakespeare's play, and evokes the power of the fact that India is the world's youngest and fastest growing democracy
The key protagonists in the book (and their King Lear counterparts) are:
Devraj Bapuji (King Lear), billionaire owner of the eponymous Devraj Conglomerate and his daughters: the eldest Gargu (Goneril) married to the stolid Surenda (Albany); the more flighty and fashionable Radha (Regan) married to the more ambituous Bubu (Cornwall); the youngest Sita (Cordelia) an environmentally aware Cambridge student.
Devraj’s right hand man Ranjit Singh (Gloucester), his gay heir Jeet (Edgar) and his illegitimate son Jivan (Edmund).
The book opens with Jivan returning from imposed exile in America after the death of his mother (Devraj’s singer mistress) and reacquainting himself with his childhood friends Gargu and Radha, at the same time as a returning party arranged for Sita at her graduation. At a lunch on the Day of Jivan’s return, Devraj announces he is splitting the company between his daughters, only for Sita’s refusal to pay homege to him leading to him renouncing her inheritance; Jivan meanwhile sows seeds of mistrust between his father and brother – all of this of course a character by character re-enactment of the basic plot of “King Lear” and which is also followed by King-Lear echoing discord between Devraj and his Head of Security Kritik (Kent) and then a wedge between Devraj and his daughters due to the behaviour of Devraj’s hundreds (Lear’s retinue of a hundred servants) a hand selected cadre of high fliers.
The book is written in five lengthy, third party point of view sections – concentrating in turn on the viewpoints of Jivan, Gargi, Radha, Jeet and Sita. The length of these sections and the use of a continuous present tense (as well as the liberal interspersing of only partially translated Hindi in the book) can at times make this an exhausting as well as an exhilarating read. I was at times reminded of the "assault on the senses" that many Westerners use to describe their first visit to India.
One of the interesting choices in the novel is to open with sympathetic accounts of the actions and motivations of those – Jivan, Gargi and Radha – whose King Lear equivalents – Edmund, Goneril and Regan are effectively unambiguously villians. The effect of this as others have pointed out in their reviews, is to give a novel which while clearly borrowing heavily from King Lear, also gives back some added perspective to that play, particularly around the motivations of the full group of protagonists.
The sections are intercut with some first party ramblings from Devraj – who early on speculates:
Now the most winning stories always have the same cast of characters in one form or another. There is a set of twins, or double beings, a trainee architect, a father, an uncle, a brother, a desirable sister with no self-control, and of course incestuous love. There is always a narrator: an old-man in a pickle factory, sitting on his chutpoy reading Dickens in the English language, framed by a picture of the Taj Mahal. The settings are new worlds, the language tricksy. Pah. Making up words and full of doubt. What is the value of such stories? Expensive papers and lies. My story is a simple one, come closer if you can. The language you understand it in is not the one I am speaking. It contains elements of truth, the genius of ancients, and some more modern influences. It is priceless and therefore free for all
The references to “most winning stories” seems to directly reference the writing of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy (both of whom feature pickle factories in their most famous novels) while also implicitly acknowledging the way in which much of modern Indian literary writing draws heavily both on the style of Dickens and implicitly on the implausible plots of Shakespeare; and the same could be said to be true for Indian TV
Jivan used to watch these hokey Indian serials on Star Plus TV, sitting with Ma in the afternoons when he got in from school. She loved them all: the family dramas with cardboard villains and handsome heroes, non-stop cases of mistaken identity, masters for servants, good girls for bad. Brothers disguised as each other, lovingly beating sisters, wives and mothers-in-law fighting over sons. In the end the good would get rich and the bad were punished. The lovers would be united with parental blessing, kneeling for hands to be raised over their heads in benediction, the parents would kneel and beg their children to bless them right back. It was always happily-ever-after-the-end.
There are two very distinct literary choices that the author makes in this book – both of which struck me as slightly false on a first read, but as thoroughly justified on a second.
The first is referenced above – the frequent use of many half-translated (or untranslated) not just Hindi words, but full sentences. Initially this is to convey the explicit disorientation that the Americanised Devraj first experiences on his return to His homeland, as he struggles to recall his childhood Hindi, but it is continued throughout the book. I understand from interviews with the author that her aim was to convey something of the reality of the world for her and many of her friends – living in Hindi speaking households in English speaking countries, and therefore simultaneously inhabiting both linguistic worlds. Even further than this though is an acknowledgment of the way in which both languages have inspired and fed the other over time. As Devraj notes when addressing the reader:
My story is a simple one … the language you understand it is not the one I am speaking. It contains elements of truth, the genius of ancients, and some more modern influences. It is priceless and therefore free for all
The second was the choice to follow not just the main plot, but often the dialogue of King Lear, and more specifically to choose to convey some of the more dramatic parts of the original plot (the putting in the stocks of Lear’s messenger, the apocalyptic storm) and those that are just odd (the gouging of Gloucester's eyes, the Dover cliffs bluffed suicide scene) literally and not in a more imaginative and figurative sense. However again I now appreciate that this choice is in many ways fundamental to the author’s very conception of this novel – her realisation that concepts and events which render King Lear strange to a modern Western reader (the extreme patriarchy; the use of Lear's fortune as what is effectively dowry; the fundamental conflict of ambition, family and state; unchecked state violence and civil conflict; extremes of class/caste; the abuse of domestic servants) can be understood in a modern context when transplanted across the world.
Just as King Lear examines the violence that flowed from Lear's partriarchy and his forced and ill-thought through division of his Kingdom between his two daughters, so We That Are Young could be said to examine the effects of British colonialism and the long lasting impacts of the violence and division that flowed from Partition.
Overall a vibrant and wonderful novel.
My thanks to Galley Beggar Press for the ARC.
June 21, 2018
Update 21/6/18. Now the well-deserved winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2018. Congratulations to Preti Taneja and all at Galley Beggar.
This vibrant, epic, ambitious transplantation of King Lear to modern India is by far the longest book on the Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlist, and looks a potential winner. Taneja keeps the essential elements of the familiar Shakespeare version of the story in place, but allows herself plenty of scope to explore the issues, extremes of wealth and poverty, corruption and factionalism of modern India.
It is probably easiest to list the main players with their Shakespeare equivalents:
Devraj Bapuji (Lear) - a super-rich magnate and owner of one of India's biggest companies, his daughters Gargi (Goneril), Radha (Regan) and Sita (Cordelia), his henchmen Ranjit (Gloucester) and Kritik (Kent), Ranjit's sons Jeet (Edgar) and the illegitimate Jivan (Edmund). Albany and Cornwall become Surendra and Bubu.
The story is told in six parts. The first five are told from the perspectives of the younger protagonists, and at the end of each chapter Bapuji gets to speak for himself, getting increasingly incoherent as the story proceeds. This structure breaks up the linear narrative, and in some cases leads to events being described more than once, from different viewpoints. The last part is shorter and ties up the loose ends.
In the first and longest part Jivan returns from America, where he has been living with his now dead mother for 15 years, and arrives on Bapuji's "farm" near Delhi - every lavish excess is described, and this allows Taneja to introduce the rest of the cast and the nature of the family business, and to describe background events and his childhood memories. Bapuji is the son of a Maharaja from Kashmir who has lost his land, and his mother Nanu who is still alive at 90 - he has built up the family firm from almost nothing, initially by exploiting the skills of Kashmiri craftsmen. One of Bapuji's pet projects is to build a luxury hotel in Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital. Over the course of Jivan's first day there, Bapuji announces his retirement plans to the family over lunch, and puts his daughters to the test, and by the end of the day both Sita and Jeet have disappeared, and Kritik has been dismissed for defending Sita. In Sita's case this is because she does not want to be married off, but wishes to pursue her own career as an environmental campaigner. Jeet has been living a double life, acquiring ancient artefacts for the company while maintaining a secret gay relationship, he goes into hiding because he believes this is about to be exposed.
The second part revolves around Gargi, who is initially presented as a conscientious daughter and worthy heir to the business, frustrated by India's archaic and sexist property laws. She resolves to rid the business of corruption, and modernise it - she wants to maintain the unity of the company and refuses to sign the papers that legitimise Bapuji's plans to split the business. The disappointments of her marriage to the impotent and largely useless Surendra are also described. In this part Gargi argues with Bapuji and refuses to accommodate the regular parties of his 100 henchmen.
The third part is about Radha, who is vain and hedonistic. She has been partying in Goa, but she and Bubu head for Srinagar when they hear that Bapuji and Nanu are heading there, having started to amass popular support by denouncing the company's activities and blaming his daughters. Radha starts an affair with Jivan, who is now employed as a company security man. Bubu is a corrupt playboy who has been allowed to control Radha's share of the business. Bapuji arrives to find that one of Kritik's deputies has been beaten left chained in the sun, quarrels with Radha and walks away from the hotel. The section ends with the blinding of Ranjit and the murder of Bubu - no attempt has been made to spare any of the brutality of the original.
In the fourth part we meet Jeet in his guise of Rudra the Naph. He has also journeyed to Srinagar, living among the untouchables on the rubbish dump and surviving as a holy man and storyteller. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the story, in that it is almost the only part in which the action moves away from the elite owning class. He encounters Bapuji in the storm (the heath becomes the dump), and is entrusted with looking after his father, and instead of leading him to Amarnath (Dover Cliffs) he takes him back to Delhi and the farm.
The fifth part returns to Sita, who is the least realised of the main characters. Her escape to Sri Lanka is barely described, and by the time we meet her she is in a safe house in Kashmir with Kritik and the increasingly feeble Bapuji. Unlike Cordelia, she defends her unmarried status. The remainder of the book plays out the rest of Shakespeare's denouement.
The language of the book is interesting - the dialogue includes a lot of Hindi, much of it untranslated, which can be a little frustrating for the untrained reader, though there is never much doubt about the more important events.
I was a little disappointed by the number of typographical errors, mostly incorrect homophones, but overall I can't find a strong reason not to award this book the full five stars and encourage others to read it.
This vibrant, epic, ambitious transplantation of King Lear to modern India is by far the longest book on the Republic of Consciousness Prize shortlist, and looks a potential winner. Taneja keeps the essential elements of the familiar Shakespeare version of the story in place, but allows herself plenty of scope to explore the issues, extremes of wealth and poverty, corruption and factionalism of modern India.
It is probably easiest to list the main players with their Shakespeare equivalents:
Devraj Bapuji (Lear) - a super-rich magnate and owner of one of India's biggest companies, his daughters Gargi (Goneril), Radha (Regan) and Sita (Cordelia), his henchmen Ranjit (Gloucester) and Kritik (Kent), Ranjit's sons Jeet (Edgar) and the illegitimate Jivan (Edmund). Albany and Cornwall become Surendra and Bubu.
The story is told in six parts. The first five are told from the perspectives of the younger protagonists, and at the end of each chapter Bapuji gets to speak for himself, getting increasingly incoherent as the story proceeds. This structure breaks up the linear narrative, and in some cases leads to events being described more than once, from different viewpoints. The last part is shorter and ties up the loose ends.
In the first and longest part Jivan returns from America, where he has been living with his now dead mother for 15 years, and arrives on Bapuji's "farm" near Delhi - every lavish excess is described, and this allows Taneja to introduce the rest of the cast and the nature of the family business, and to describe background events and his childhood memories. Bapuji is the son of a Maharaja from Kashmir who has lost his land, and his mother Nanu who is still alive at 90 - he has built up the family firm from almost nothing, initially by exploiting the skills of Kashmiri craftsmen. One of Bapuji's pet projects is to build a luxury hotel in Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital. Over the course of Jivan's first day there, Bapuji announces his retirement plans to the family over lunch, and puts his daughters to the test, and by the end of the day both Sita and Jeet have disappeared, and Kritik has been dismissed for defending Sita. In Sita's case this is because she does not want to be married off, but wishes to pursue her own career as an environmental campaigner. Jeet has been living a double life, acquiring ancient artefacts for the company while maintaining a secret gay relationship, he goes into hiding because he believes this is about to be exposed.
The second part revolves around Gargi, who is initially presented as a conscientious daughter and worthy heir to the business, frustrated by India's archaic and sexist property laws. She resolves to rid the business of corruption, and modernise it - she wants to maintain the unity of the company and refuses to sign the papers that legitimise Bapuji's plans to split the business. The disappointments of her marriage to the impotent and largely useless Surendra are also described. In this part Gargi argues with Bapuji and refuses to accommodate the regular parties of his 100 henchmen.
The third part is about Radha, who is vain and hedonistic. She has been partying in Goa, but she and Bubu head for Srinagar when they hear that Bapuji and Nanu are heading there, having started to amass popular support by denouncing the company's activities and blaming his daughters. Radha starts an affair with Jivan, who is now employed as a company security man. Bubu is a corrupt playboy who has been allowed to control Radha's share of the business. Bapuji arrives to find that one of Kritik's deputies has been beaten left chained in the sun, quarrels with Radha and walks away from the hotel. The section ends with the blinding of Ranjit and the murder of Bubu - no attempt has been made to spare any of the brutality of the original.
In the fourth part we meet Jeet in his guise of Rudra the Naph. He has also journeyed to Srinagar, living among the untouchables on the rubbish dump and surviving as a holy man and storyteller. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the story, in that it is almost the only part in which the action moves away from the elite owning class. He encounters Bapuji in the storm (the heath becomes the dump), and is entrusted with looking after his father, and instead of leading him to Amarnath (Dover Cliffs) he takes him back to Delhi and the farm.
The fifth part returns to Sita, who is the least realised of the main characters. Her escape to Sri Lanka is barely described, and by the time we meet her she is in a safe house in Kashmir with Kritik and the increasingly feeble Bapuji. Unlike Cordelia, she defends her unmarried status. The remainder of the book plays out the rest of Shakespeare's denouement.
The language of the book is interesting - the dialogue includes a lot of Hindi, much of it untranslated, which can be a little frustrating for the untrained reader, though there is never much doubt about the more important events.
I was a little disappointed by the number of typographical errors, mostly incorrect homophones, but overall I can't find a strong reason not to award this book the full five stars and encourage others to read it.
October 5, 2017
This should have been right smack dab in my wheelhouse, given my penchant for both Indian lit and Shakespeare (it's a modern retelling of Lear)... but I must say, despite some gorgeous prose, I found it for the most part rather tedious and almost gave up halfway through. In need of much judicious editing (the inciting incident of the patriarch's division of his spoils doesn't even occur into well over 100 pages into this LONG 553 pages!), I was also more than a little annoyed by the miniscule print of the Galley Beggar Press edition AND by the constant need to run to Google Translate, due to the many reversions to Hindi words and phrases - it may instill verisimilitude, but a glossary or footnotes would have been a welcome antidote to the author's contempt for her non-Indian readers!
As to the novel itself, sections of it are quite delightful and whereas Edward St. Aubyn's recent Hogarth version of the story, 'Dunbar' (which I read just prior to this, so maybe I was 'Leared' out by the time I got to this one), strays perhaps TOO far from the Shakespearian original, here Taneja clings a mite too steadfastly to certain elements that make little sense in a modern milieu (for example, the blinding of the Gloucester character - albeit one of the more viscerally rendered scenes). Most of the contemporary equivalents DO work, however, especially the scenes of Jeet (the Edmund character) amongst the dabhi (slum) dwellers - although these also somewhat pale in comparison to similar ones in Katherine Boo's outstanding 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers'.
And while the circularity of the structure, telling scenes over (and over ... and over) from the various viewpoints of the five main characters provides some interesting counterpoints, it also slows the action to an almost standstill. However, ultimately I am not sorry I read this, but doubt I would ever pick it up again for a re-read - even though NOW my copy has copious notes as to the translations...
** Fun Fact/'Easter Egg': On page 467, Taneja writes: 'Sita thinks he should be in rural England being nursed by aristocratic girls with names like Abby (for shelter), Florence (like the bulbul), or Megan (her skin pale as flushed pearls). Better he go to Switzerland or Dubai and rest at some hushed private clinic..." This is undoubtedly a terrific 'insider' tribute to St. Aubyn's simultaneously published 'Dunbar', as those are the names he uses for Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan - and his book opens with the Lear character escaping from just such a Swiss clinic! Cheeky!
As to the novel itself, sections of it are quite delightful and whereas Edward St. Aubyn's recent Hogarth version of the story, 'Dunbar' (which I read just prior to this, so maybe I was 'Leared' out by the time I got to this one), strays perhaps TOO far from the Shakespearian original, here Taneja clings a mite too steadfastly to certain elements that make little sense in a modern milieu (for example, the blinding of the Gloucester character - albeit one of the more viscerally rendered scenes). Most of the contemporary equivalents DO work, however, especially the scenes of Jeet (the Edmund character) amongst the dabhi (slum) dwellers - although these also somewhat pale in comparison to similar ones in Katherine Boo's outstanding 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers'.
And while the circularity of the structure, telling scenes over (and over ... and over) from the various viewpoints of the five main characters provides some interesting counterpoints, it also slows the action to an almost standstill. However, ultimately I am not sorry I read this, but doubt I would ever pick it up again for a re-read - even though NOW my copy has copious notes as to the translations...
** Fun Fact/'Easter Egg': On page 467, Taneja writes: 'Sita thinks he should be in rural England being nursed by aristocratic girls with names like Abby (for shelter), Florence (like the bulbul), or Megan (her skin pale as flushed pearls). Better he go to Switzerland or Dubai and rest at some hushed private clinic..." This is undoubtedly a terrific 'insider' tribute to St. Aubyn's simultaneously published 'Dunbar', as those are the names he uses for Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan - and his book opens with the Lear character escaping from just such a Swiss clinic! Cheeky!
January 26, 2018
We That Are Young has a feel to it that's not dissimilar to Salman Rushdie's recent, 2017, novel, The Golden House. That's praise. Both novels ultimately revolve around a big figure, a patriarch, who is revealed to be rather less worthy of the adulation that his status and visibility might indicate. Preti Taneja's Devraj Bapuji to Rushdie's Nero Golden.
Both books shine a spotlight on an India of the latter 20th century, far removed from the deference or degradation (depending on your viewpoint) of the indigenous population under the British Raj.
India, the modern nation, in Taneja's account is conveyed in its vastness, diversity, poverty and cruelty. It's well written and utterly convincing (to this reader who hasn't experienced the country at first hand)
The division into five sections (by character) and overlapping timelines works well bringing different perspective to events taking place over a very short time span. I found Jeet (Rudra) in the fictional city(slum) of Dhimbala to be the most striking of them.
The frequently pitiable lot of women (despite the exceptions of the two leading sisters, Garghi and Radha), is never far from the surface: "Sharam" (shame) from birth.
Families. Dynasties. Loyalty. Devotion. Power. Service. Poverty. Greed. Betrayal.
The Shakespearean, King Lear, framework is well worked, as the base emotions are given full rein.
The author is clear in her description of the book's theme, from the very first line, "it's not about land, it's about money".
This is amplified later on in the book(405)we that are young! We that are jigging on the brink of ruin; we that are washed in the filth of corruption;the mirage of new India is bemoaned.
Both Galley Beggar Press, and the Republic of Consciousness charter (We That Are Young is longlisted at the time of writing) state that they celebrate
‘hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose’.
I think this is a great advert for small presses, and though I'm not sure I would particularly describe the prose as "gorgeous", I certainly felt the commitment (or hardcore) in Preti Taneja's writing.
Both books shine a spotlight on an India of the latter 20th century, far removed from the deference or degradation (depending on your viewpoint) of the indigenous population under the British Raj.
India, the modern nation, in Taneja's account is conveyed in its vastness, diversity, poverty and cruelty. It's well written and utterly convincing (to this reader who hasn't experienced the country at first hand)
The division into five sections (by character) and overlapping timelines works well bringing different perspective to events taking place over a very short time span. I found Jeet (Rudra) in the fictional city(slum) of Dhimbala to be the most striking of them.
The frequently pitiable lot of women (despite the exceptions of the two leading sisters, Garghi and Radha), is never far from the surface: "Sharam" (shame) from birth.
Families. Dynasties. Loyalty. Devotion. Power. Service. Poverty. Greed. Betrayal.
The Shakespearean, King Lear, framework is well worked, as the base emotions are given full rein.
The author is clear in her description of the book's theme, from the very first line, "it's not about land, it's about money".
This is amplified later on in the book(405)we that are young! We that are jigging on the brink of ruin; we that are washed in the filth of corruption;the mirage of new India is bemoaned.
Both Galley Beggar Press, and the Republic of Consciousness charter (We That Are Young is longlisted at the time of writing) state that they celebrate
‘hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose’.
I think this is a great advert for small presses, and though I'm not sure I would particularly describe the prose as "gorgeous", I certainly felt the commitment (or hardcore) in Preti Taneja's writing.
February 27, 2018
A great book can be great at different levels, but a bad one doesn’t have that luxury. Mislaid by all the hype and praise from western critics made me pick up this book. Probably this is the worst book I read in a long time. Pathetic plotting, miserable attempt at adapting King Lear in Indian context, lack of real knowledge on the subcontinent is so evident. I got migraine by constant feel of something getting drilled into my brain. I hardly write reviews, but this time thought that it was my responsibility to warn the readers so that they can spare themselves of this ordeal
January 5, 2018
NOW RE-READ AFTER ITS INCLUSION ON THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE LONG LIST.
We That Are Young is published by Galley Beggar Press. Perhaps best known as the publisher that took the risk on A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing after everyone else had rejected it (it went on to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction), Galley Beggar Press is also the publisher of the wonderful Forbidden Line that I read earlier this year and which remains one of the most unusual books I have read in 2017.
My thanks to Galley Beggar Press for an ARC of Preti Taneja’s re-working of King Lear.
Taneja takes the story and transposes it to India. This works really well - it is the ideal setting. King Lear ends with a speech that gives Taneja her title:
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
And, as the book points out, India is a young nation of young people.
We live in a young country, Jivan. Five years ago you couldn’t even get Coca-Cola in a can here. The kids who are making money now, like all the upper-level staff we employ, the girls and the boys who didn’t grow up travelling abroad, they just want to make money, be cool. They know what stuff they want; the great thing is, they don’t know why. No context! My God they are the ideal customer! They didn’t have access to anything, and now look – everything. All at once. Now, now, now!
And:
Gargi, he says, you told me the night Bapuji left the Farm that this is our time. Don’t we have the ‘the youngest population, the fastest growing democracy’ in the world?
So, the king becomes a majorly successful Indian business man and the rest of the characters fall into place in that environment.
It can be difficult to take a well-known story that is hundreds of years old and create something fresh out of it. If you make it too obvious what you are doing, your readers spend the whole story comparing events and characters with the original. If you are too subtle about it, no one knows what you have done. Somehow, Taneja manages to strike the balance. Yes, this is a re-telling of King Lear, transposed to modern day India, but it is also a complex story in its own right that pulls you through it. Although I read King Lear prior to reading this, I didn’t find myself continually drawing comparisons: I was happy to let Taneja’s story develop into its own revealing portrait of Indian culture. If you want, it is relatively easy to make the link between characters in Shakespeare and characters in Taneja’s book, but I didn’t feel that was important except maybe as an intellectual exercise at the end of the book.
The fact is, this is a superbly told story in its own right. My experience with the book was that it got better with each section as the intensity and emotion gradually ramped up to the tragic climax. The fact that I knew from the original the basics of what that climax would be didn’t stop me from devouring the pages!
And, in fact, the structure does actually help you get a better appreciation of the original. It is split into sections with each one named after, and focusing on, one of the key characters. This means Taneja can take the opportunity to both circle back on some events and look at them again from a different perspective, but also to give us fresh insight into the motivation of these characters. If I were to re-read King Lear, I would do that with a fresh perspective on the key players.
And then, finally, I picked up a great quote to use when someone isn’t quite all there: Yep, there’s definitely a samosa missing from the high tea selection.
It’s long, but it is a really excellent read and I hope it receives some recognition through the various literary prizes out there.
We That Are Young is published by Galley Beggar Press. Perhaps best known as the publisher that took the risk on A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing after everyone else had rejected it (it went on to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction), Galley Beggar Press is also the publisher of the wonderful Forbidden Line that I read earlier this year and which remains one of the most unusual books I have read in 2017.
My thanks to Galley Beggar Press for an ARC of Preti Taneja’s re-working of King Lear.
Taneja takes the story and transposes it to India. This works really well - it is the ideal setting. King Lear ends with a speech that gives Taneja her title:
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
And, as the book points out, India is a young nation of young people.
We live in a young country, Jivan. Five years ago you couldn’t even get Coca-Cola in a can here. The kids who are making money now, like all the upper-level staff we employ, the girls and the boys who didn’t grow up travelling abroad, they just want to make money, be cool. They know what stuff they want; the great thing is, they don’t know why. No context! My God they are the ideal customer! They didn’t have access to anything, and now look – everything. All at once. Now, now, now!
And:
Gargi, he says, you told me the night Bapuji left the Farm that this is our time. Don’t we have the ‘the youngest population, the fastest growing democracy’ in the world?
So, the king becomes a majorly successful Indian business man and the rest of the characters fall into place in that environment.
It can be difficult to take a well-known story that is hundreds of years old and create something fresh out of it. If you make it too obvious what you are doing, your readers spend the whole story comparing events and characters with the original. If you are too subtle about it, no one knows what you have done. Somehow, Taneja manages to strike the balance. Yes, this is a re-telling of King Lear, transposed to modern day India, but it is also a complex story in its own right that pulls you through it. Although I read King Lear prior to reading this, I didn’t find myself continually drawing comparisons: I was happy to let Taneja’s story develop into its own revealing portrait of Indian culture. If you want, it is relatively easy to make the link between characters in Shakespeare and characters in Taneja’s book, but I didn’t feel that was important except maybe as an intellectual exercise at the end of the book.
The fact is, this is a superbly told story in its own right. My experience with the book was that it got better with each section as the intensity and emotion gradually ramped up to the tragic climax. The fact that I knew from the original the basics of what that climax would be didn’t stop me from devouring the pages!
And, in fact, the structure does actually help you get a better appreciation of the original. It is split into sections with each one named after, and focusing on, one of the key characters. This means Taneja can take the opportunity to both circle back on some events and look at them again from a different perspective, but also to give us fresh insight into the motivation of these characters. If I were to re-read King Lear, I would do that with a fresh perspective on the key players.
And then, finally, I picked up a great quote to use when someone isn’t quite all there: Yep, there’s definitely a samosa missing from the high tea selection.
It’s long, but it is a really excellent read and I hope it receives some recognition through the various literary prizes out there.
April 1, 2019
I've picked up this book as it received a lot of positive reviews here and has won Desmond Elliot prize for the first novel. I have to admit I was somewhat underwhelmed. The author models her book on King Lear and sets it in the modern day India. In general, 2018 was the year of classic retelling by the modern authors in English language. I am not big fan of the idea, though of course I admit that all the literature in a way is the retelling of the books written before. At this case as well I felt quite ambivalent about King's Lear plot, and may be if I would not know about this fact, I would appreciate the book more. Broadly, she picks up the prototypes of the five young characters from the play and studies them.
Lets start with the positives:
- the language at the beginning of the book felt energetic and fresh. She uses the present tense throughout and that helps her builds up pace. It worked for the first 100 pages or so. But unfortunately, later it has become somewhat monotonic. And at the sentence’s level she is not always careful. We can get this: "She rises. Her blood is telling her to run, her head to stay and force answers. Her heart wants Gargi and Radha: her hands need to hold theirs." I was happy not to know what her legs, stomach and other body parts wanted at that minute as the list could go on.
- her villains are much more ambiguous in their motivations than in the original play and a bit more likeable. Especially it applies to the two older sisters and Jivan (Edmund). So it leaves the reader a space for contemplation . However, if someone reads this book without knowledge of the original play, this advantage would probably fade.
- sense of place. I am struggling with this one a bit. For the first 3 out of the 6 parts of the book, I did not feel any sense of place - it could be anywhere, in spite of numerous untranslated dialogue incepts in Hindu. And that was a bit frustrating as I wanted to know about India. However it has changed in the last parts. The part set inside a slum was the best in my opinion.
Now, negatives:
- unfortunately, it suffers from those pitfalls of the first novels: too long, too disjointed and not adequately resolved. I would want to know what happened at the end to the all of 5 main characters. Of course, I've got Shakespeare for that. But standalone, the author has left a lot of ends loose. Also some strange subplot with the poisoned apple has resurfaced in the last few pages. Why?
- I did not have a feeling it worked as a whole. As I mentioned, the book consists of 5 separate parts told on behalf of the one of the five young characters. It is written in a third person. The dialogue is often contrived and basic. Each of these parts looks more like a character study. The interaction with the rest of the story mainly happens through the King Lier's plot. So the feeling is that a certain new character is appearing on the scene and then dropped back into the darkness. I found it very irritating as the characters do not work with each other. Out of 5, the two parts were quite successful as stand alone novellas. And I hardly could care for another 3. I was only frustrated and not intrested, when Sita (Cordelia) was introduced, and very briefly at that, in the last part of the book for the first time while again the rest of the cast have fallen into the shadows. This is while in theory Sita would have a fantastic potential as a character as she was so different from the rest of the family.
- this novel should be nominated for the bad sex award. The sex scenes and fantasies, fortunately not numerous, were really off-putting ones and made me wince, which is really rare.
- India has appeared very stereotypical out of the book - the young nation and the young democracy with the huge inequality. One does not need to read this book for this. I did not get what Taneja thinks about it.
Overall, Deborah Levi is saying on the blurb that Taneja is the writer to watch and I agree with that. But in hindsight, I'd rather spend my time elsewhere than reading this book 540 pages in spite of some really good parts of it.
2 stars plus 1 which i always add for debut novels.
Lets start with the positives:
- the language at the beginning of the book felt energetic and fresh. She uses the present tense throughout and that helps her builds up pace. It worked for the first 100 pages or so. But unfortunately, later it has become somewhat monotonic. And at the sentence’s level she is not always careful. We can get this: "She rises. Her blood is telling her to run, her head to stay and force answers. Her heart wants Gargi and Radha: her hands need to hold theirs." I was happy not to know what her legs, stomach and other body parts wanted at that minute as the list could go on.
- her villains are much more ambiguous in their motivations than in the original play and a bit more likeable. Especially it applies to the two older sisters and Jivan (Edmund). So it leaves the reader a space for contemplation . However, if someone reads this book without knowledge of the original play, this advantage would probably fade.
- sense of place. I am struggling with this one a bit. For the first 3 out of the 6 parts of the book, I did not feel any sense of place - it could be anywhere, in spite of numerous untranslated dialogue incepts in Hindu. And that was a bit frustrating as I wanted to know about India. However it has changed in the last parts. The part set inside a slum was the best in my opinion.
Now, negatives:
- unfortunately, it suffers from those pitfalls of the first novels: too long, too disjointed and not adequately resolved. I would want to know what happened at the end to the all of 5 main characters. Of course, I've got Shakespeare for that. But standalone, the author has left a lot of ends loose. Also some strange subplot with the poisoned apple has resurfaced in the last few pages. Why?
- I did not have a feeling it worked as a whole. As I mentioned, the book consists of 5 separate parts told on behalf of the one of the five young characters. It is written in a third person. The dialogue is often contrived and basic. Each of these parts looks more like a character study. The interaction with the rest of the story mainly happens through the King Lier's plot. So the feeling is that a certain new character is appearing on the scene and then dropped back into the darkness. I found it very irritating as the characters do not work with each other. Out of 5, the two parts were quite successful as stand alone novellas. And I hardly could care for another 3. I was only frustrated and not intrested, when Sita (Cordelia) was introduced, and very briefly at that, in the last part of the book for the first time while again the rest of the cast have fallen into the shadows. This is while in theory Sita would have a fantastic potential as a character as she was so different from the rest of the family.
- this novel should be nominated for the bad sex award. The sex scenes and fantasies, fortunately not numerous, were really off-putting ones and made me wince, which is really rare.
- India has appeared very stereotypical out of the book - the young nation and the young democracy with the huge inequality. One does not need to read this book for this. I did not get what Taneja thinks about it.
Overall, Deborah Levi is saying on the blurb that Taneja is the writer to watch and I agree with that. But in hindsight, I'd rather spend my time elsewhere than reading this book 540 pages in spite of some really good parts of it.
2 stars plus 1 which i always add for debut novels.
December 24, 2017
A modern day re-telling of "King Lear", 'We Are That Young' is a brilliant exploration of greed, corruption and vice in modern India. The novel follows the aristocrat-cum-royal family of Devraj; a patriarch whose puissance dissolves once he cedes ownership of his company to his elder daughters, Garghi and Radha, only to rise, ephemerally, like a phoenix, in a haze of self-righteous indignation against the corruption inherent in the company he set-up, riding a wife of populism based on deep-seated misogyny and malevolent nationalism, 'We Are That Young' both eschews the limitations so often placed on Indian literature, whilst at the same time exploring the problems inherent in modern Indian society; the uneven distribution of wealth, the rise of parochial religious fundamentalism and the cultural schizophrenia India is experiencing under the relentless waves of globalization.
There story is told via multiple narrators; Jivan, the illegitimate son of Devraj's right hand man, Ranjit, is the first and penultimate narrator. A vapid and ultimately egoistical young man, Jivan acts as the catalyst for the corruption and downfall of Garghi, trapped in a loveless relationship with a neurotic husband and Radha, married to the bellicose buffoon Bubu; Jivan is the key by which both characters break free from the shackles of their father, Devraj. Whilst objectively speaking the reader's sympathies should lie with Devraj, Tenaja, influenced partially by King Lear, paints Devraj as a chauvinistic egoist, more concerned with his pride and money than his daughters, propagating a philosophy which is a mix of bigotry, misogyny and populism any tragic elements of his downfall are skewered by his selfish characteristics. Again, although Garghi and Radha are ostensibly the villains of the story, Taneja's multi-faceted characterisation enables the reader to understand the reasons for their frustrations of being forever trapped in the roles society expects of them as women. The other principle characters are Ranjit's soon, Jeet, who undergoes a ultimately fruitless spiritual epiphany after going through an existential crisis about the emptiness of life and the meaningless of his wealth. The heroine of the story-and one of the few positive characters-is Devraj's youngest daughter Sita, whose truculence in refusing to marry sets off the chain of events which takes over the character's lives.
Beneath this Taneja's India shimmers forth via a blaze of colours and sounds; the effervescent sun-set on a sultry evening, the degradation of the slums, the superficiality of the super-rich, Taneja captures and describes modern Indian with a verve and vivacity which is reminiscent of Salman Rushdie, from the corrupt curmudgeons who hold power, to the servility of the poor and the weight of Westernization which Indian society is labouring under, Taneja is able to capture the complex, contradictory and often cruel contractions of a society undergoing constant flux and change and of a family which is driving and leading much of that change; a family which, like wider Indian society, becomes steadily dehumanised with money and power.
There story is told via multiple narrators; Jivan, the illegitimate son of Devraj's right hand man, Ranjit, is the first and penultimate narrator. A vapid and ultimately egoistical young man, Jivan acts as the catalyst for the corruption and downfall of Garghi, trapped in a loveless relationship with a neurotic husband and Radha, married to the bellicose buffoon Bubu; Jivan is the key by which both characters break free from the shackles of their father, Devraj. Whilst objectively speaking the reader's sympathies should lie with Devraj, Tenaja, influenced partially by King Lear, paints Devraj as a chauvinistic egoist, more concerned with his pride and money than his daughters, propagating a philosophy which is a mix of bigotry, misogyny and populism any tragic elements of his downfall are skewered by his selfish characteristics. Again, although Garghi and Radha are ostensibly the villains of the story, Taneja's multi-faceted characterisation enables the reader to understand the reasons for their frustrations of being forever trapped in the roles society expects of them as women. The other principle characters are Ranjit's soon, Jeet, who undergoes a ultimately fruitless spiritual epiphany after going through an existential crisis about the emptiness of life and the meaningless of his wealth. The heroine of the story-and one of the few positive characters-is Devraj's youngest daughter Sita, whose truculence in refusing to marry sets off the chain of events which takes over the character's lives.
Beneath this Taneja's India shimmers forth via a blaze of colours and sounds; the effervescent sun-set on a sultry evening, the degradation of the slums, the superficiality of the super-rich, Taneja captures and describes modern Indian with a verve and vivacity which is reminiscent of Salman Rushdie, from the corrupt curmudgeons who hold power, to the servility of the poor and the weight of Westernization which Indian society is labouring under, Taneja is able to capture the complex, contradictory and often cruel contractions of a society undergoing constant flux and change and of a family which is driving and leading much of that change; a family which, like wider Indian society, becomes steadily dehumanised with money and power.
July 28, 2017
We that are young, by Preti Taneja, is a fabulous reworking of King Lear. Having enjoyed a number of adaptations of this Shakespearean tragedy on stage I was familiar with the direction the arc of the story was likely to take. This did not in any way detract from my enjoyment. The book is big in size, scope and depth. The action is set in modern India and offers a masterclass in the country, its people, and the stubborness and hurt inherent in wider family feuds.
The tale opens with the return of a son, Jivan, banished to America with his mother when he was thirteen years old. Prior to this he had been one of five young playmates, although as the child of his father’s mistress had never been permitted full integration into the privileged lives of his friends. His half brother, Jeet, and he grew up alongside the three daughters of a hugely wealthy businessman, Devraj, who is also Jeet’s godfather. The girls – clever Gargi, beautiful Radha, and baby Sita – have in the intervening years grown into outwardly dutiful and obedient women.
Jivan returns on the cusp of change. The oppulent farm where the family now live is being prepared for Sita’s engagement celebrations. As Jivan is shown around, a lunch is taking place that will be the catalyst to Devraj’s ruination.
Economic growth has enabled India to consider itself a world player and with this has come a clash of cultures. Despite the quality and beauty of local products there is a hankering after western labels. Colour and vibrancy are being toned down, flesh exposed in imported attire. Women desire more freedom and opportunity than tradition permits.
Devraj demands that his daughters regularly demonstrate love and respect for him, in word and deed. When Sita unexpectedly refuses to conform he attempts to punish her by passing on the share of the business he had selected for her, his favourite, to her sisters. Gargi and Radha watch as he reacts to their little sister’s rebellion, envious of her courage but afraid of its effects. They fear their father may be going mad and determine to save the business for themselves.
The story is told from the points of view of each of the five former playmates, with occasional chapters in Devraj’s voice. Their’s is a life of excess, abuse and thwarted desire. When Jeet chooses to leave the farm the reader is offered a snapshot of the lives of India’s untouchables, a contrast that is shocking and telling. Those who grow up in comfort will struggle to understand the psychological effects of poverty, the cost of survival.
Devraj strives for a new India yet fights any attempt by his daughters to embrace change, to relinquish stifling traditions. This generational divide is all too familiar. Elders are eager to force the rules of their upbringing on their children, unappreciative of the differing challenges they must face in an evolving world.
The writing is stunning, evoking the sights, sounds and smells of the region, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the corruption and striving for a better way of life at all levels. Turns of phrase deserve to be savoured, imagery basked in. The story is labyrinthian and should not be rushed.
Although a literary feast this is also a highly readable story. It remains engaging, tense and compelling throughout, despite knowing how it must end. I wanted to applaud that last line, the author deserves all the commendations. Recommended without reservation.
The tale opens with the return of a son, Jivan, banished to America with his mother when he was thirteen years old. Prior to this he had been one of five young playmates, although as the child of his father’s mistress had never been permitted full integration into the privileged lives of his friends. His half brother, Jeet, and he grew up alongside the three daughters of a hugely wealthy businessman, Devraj, who is also Jeet’s godfather. The girls – clever Gargi, beautiful Radha, and baby Sita – have in the intervening years grown into outwardly dutiful and obedient women.
Jivan returns on the cusp of change. The oppulent farm where the family now live is being prepared for Sita’s engagement celebrations. As Jivan is shown around, a lunch is taking place that will be the catalyst to Devraj’s ruination.
Economic growth has enabled India to consider itself a world player and with this has come a clash of cultures. Despite the quality and beauty of local products there is a hankering after western labels. Colour and vibrancy are being toned down, flesh exposed in imported attire. Women desire more freedom and opportunity than tradition permits.
Devraj demands that his daughters regularly demonstrate love and respect for him, in word and deed. When Sita unexpectedly refuses to conform he attempts to punish her by passing on the share of the business he had selected for her, his favourite, to her sisters. Gargi and Radha watch as he reacts to their little sister’s rebellion, envious of her courage but afraid of its effects. They fear their father may be going mad and determine to save the business for themselves.
The story is told from the points of view of each of the five former playmates, with occasional chapters in Devraj’s voice. Their’s is a life of excess, abuse and thwarted desire. When Jeet chooses to leave the farm the reader is offered a snapshot of the lives of India’s untouchables, a contrast that is shocking and telling. Those who grow up in comfort will struggle to understand the psychological effects of poverty, the cost of survival.
Devraj strives for a new India yet fights any attempt by his daughters to embrace change, to relinquish stifling traditions. This generational divide is all too familiar. Elders are eager to force the rules of their upbringing on their children, unappreciative of the differing challenges they must face in an evolving world.
The writing is stunning, evoking the sights, sounds and smells of the region, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the corruption and striving for a better way of life at all levels. Turns of phrase deserve to be savoured, imagery basked in. The story is labyrinthian and should not be rushed.
Although a literary feast this is also a highly readable story. It remains engaging, tense and compelling throughout, despite knowing how it must end. I wanted to applaud that last line, the author deserves all the commendations. Recommended without reservation.
Read
April 17, 2023Reading this has been an odyssey. I started strong, languished for months after the first third, and forced myself to finish in a week. I honestly can’t rate the experience, because on the one hand I’m dazzled by Taneja’s ambition for a debut novel and by all the ways she’s successful, and at the same time I was ground down by so. much. more. text. than. there. needed. to. be.
I like a good literary rewrite and I appreciated the creativity behind this 21st century Delhi version of King Lear. In part it follows the formula of twisting the narrative of a classic to ask us who the real monsters are – Gargi and Radha (Goneril and Regan) and to an extent Jivan (Edmund the Bastard) are humanized; the reader’s sympathy often comes down firmly on their side, while the Lear figure is a despot and Jeet (Edgar) a born-again proto-fascist.
What I found particularly interesting about all this is that the author is not turning the tables to criticize Shakespeare or Lear (as is the case with Wide Sargasso Sea for example) but to use Lear to criticize modern India. The title, pulled from Edgar’s final speech in the original, seems apt given India’s young population, and Taneja has said that her inspiration came first and foremost on the most basic understanding of Lear: it begins with the division of empire and ends in civil war. There are some great reimagining of scenes, particularly Lear venturing out into the storm, which here is a storm that nearly destroys a city slum. I also liked the Fool reimagined as the grandmother character, spouting mythology-inspired Indian stories that might be great wisdom, might simply be dodging the very real problems of India’s urban and rural poor.
If only the book were 200 pages shorter, it would work so much better. Not only is it 500 pages long, they are 500 dense pages, with dialogue routinely scattered with phrases in Hindi (some translated, some not, I don’t have a problem with either approach but the fact it was a mixed bag meant I had to read them all carefully). The last 80 pages took me two hours to read, because so many lines need to be considered carefully. Characters are developed… and then developed more, to breaking point. Sometimes a little explanation would have come in handy for this Western reader – I found it very hard to parse Jeet before I read some interviews with the author. Sometimes information was shoved in and it was impossible to know what it meant… why does Jeet randomly change his lover’s name? Is he changing it to a different religion? Why? It’s hard to know how much knowledge of Indian politics the reader is expected to bring to the table.
There’s so much good here (I will be haunted by Radha, I think, for some time to come) that it was frustrating to have to fight my way through the book to get to it. I’m looking forward to seeing what Taneja does next… but I hope a strong editor takes her in hand.
I like a good literary rewrite and I appreciated the creativity behind this 21st century Delhi version of King Lear. In part it follows the formula of twisting the narrative of a classic to ask us who the real monsters are – Gargi and Radha (Goneril and Regan) and to an extent Jivan (Edmund the Bastard) are humanized; the reader’s sympathy often comes down firmly on their side, while the Lear figure is a despot and Jeet (Edgar) a born-again proto-fascist.
What I found particularly interesting about all this is that the author is not turning the tables to criticize Shakespeare or Lear (as is the case with Wide Sargasso Sea for example) but to use Lear to criticize modern India. The title, pulled from Edgar’s final speech in the original, seems apt given India’s young population, and Taneja has said that her inspiration came first and foremost on the most basic understanding of Lear: it begins with the division of empire and ends in civil war. There are some great reimagining of scenes, particularly Lear venturing out into the storm, which here is a storm that nearly destroys a city slum. I also liked the Fool reimagined as the grandmother character, spouting mythology-inspired Indian stories that might be great wisdom, might simply be dodging the very real problems of India’s urban and rural poor.
If only the book were 200 pages shorter, it would work so much better. Not only is it 500 pages long, they are 500 dense pages, with dialogue routinely scattered with phrases in Hindi (some translated, some not, I don’t have a problem with either approach but the fact it was a mixed bag meant I had to read them all carefully). The last 80 pages took me two hours to read, because so many lines need to be considered carefully. Characters are developed… and then developed more, to breaking point. Sometimes a little explanation would have come in handy for this Western reader – I found it very hard to parse Jeet before I read some interviews with the author. Sometimes information was shoved in and it was impossible to know what it meant… why does Jeet randomly change his lover’s name? Is he changing it to a different religion? Why? It’s hard to know how much knowledge of Indian politics the reader is expected to bring to the table.
There’s so much good here (I will be haunted by Radha, I think, for some time to come) that it was frustrating to have to fight my way through the book to get to it. I’m looking forward to seeing what Taneja does next… but I hope a strong editor takes her in hand.
September 7, 2018
There are some fine individual passages in this book, but overall I found it quite badly flawed.
Firstly, it was simply too long – it needed an editor’s firmer hand.
Secondly, as several other reviewers have pointed out, the book is peppered with snatches of Hindi with no translation. So, for example, I read this:
Thirdly, and most importantly, there were vital parts of the plot that just didn’t work for me. I was left thinking: why on earth did that just happen? And the only answer is: because the equivalent thing happened in King Lear. And ultimately that makes it an unsuccessful adaptation.
Firstly, it was simply too long – it needed an editor’s firmer hand.
Secondly, as several other reviewers have pointed out, the book is peppered with snatches of Hindi with no translation. So, for example, I read this:
...you have my farm, my office, my desk, my chair. Now my seminars and my boys. Nahin beti, nahin. Tum aisa nahin sakti ho. Do you think to have the whole Company for yourself?What did the author expect me, who speaks no Hindi, to do with this? Pick up my phone (yet again) and type it into Google Translate? Or just be reminded (yet again) that this is India and I’m a foreigner who doesn’t properly understand it?
Thirdly, and most importantly, there were vital parts of the plot that just didn’t work for me. I was left thinking: why on earth did that just happen? And the only answer is: because the equivalent thing happened in King Lear. And ultimately that makes it an unsuccessful adaptation.
February 8, 2018
3.5 stars, rounded up for its audacity
"We That Are Young" is a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, set in India at the time of the anti-corruption riots (2011). It is creative and compelling but the writing made me feel rather feverish and discombobulated - I think this had a lot to do with the large amounts of untranslated Hindu interspersed throughout.
There were certainly moments of genius here, but I do think that (at over 500 pages) this book might have benefited from more ruthless editing. Also, a minor quibble, but my ebook edition had a large number of proofreading errors (eg several instances of "loose" that should have been "lose", "damn" that should have been "dam" etc). It's possible this would not be the case in the printed edition but I am not sure.
"We That Are Young" is a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, set in India at the time of the anti-corruption riots (2011). It is creative and compelling but the writing made me feel rather feverish and discombobulated - I think this had a lot to do with the large amounts of untranslated Hindu interspersed throughout.
There were certainly moments of genius here, but I do think that (at over 500 pages) this book might have benefited from more ruthless editing. Also, a minor quibble, but my ebook edition had a large number of proofreading errors (eg several instances of "loose" that should have been "lose", "damn" that should have been "dam" etc). It's possible this would not be the case in the printed edition but I am not sure.
April 29, 2018
I’m just not lidderary enough for this one.
A [2] average is the best compromise as my rating sense ranged from [1] to [3].
Intro
It was a real challenge to read and finish this book and I was proceeding for only 10 or so pages a day for the longest time. There were only brief segments that were compelling enough to get through more. I still find it an interesting exercise to try to define what my problems were, even if they might only be my own and no one else’s.
Structure and Pacing
The book is divided into 6 sections, 1 is assigned to each of the 5 major younger generation characters and a 6th general titular section represents a summing up. The patriarch character has occasional interjections into the younger generation sections. The beginning I “Jivan” and II “Gargi” sections were slow going, III “Radha” started to really pick it up, IV “Jeet” slowed it down all over again, V “Sita” crept to a tragic catharsis, VI “We That Are Young” seemed to just fizzle out into an obscurity where you are not quite sure what happened to everyone.
Characters
Since it is already telegraphed in the title (which is part of Edgar’s concluding speech) and as part of the synopsis and blurb information, there is no spoiler in saying that most of the WTAY characters have a parallel in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Depending on your level of familiarity with that play you can proceed without a refresher or do a quick survey through various online plot summaries. That of course may increase the predictability of the plot for some but I still found increased suspense from anticipating what the modern twists would be.
I rather enjoy The Fool as a favourite King Lear character so I was disappointed that there wasn’t an equivalent in WTAY. Bapuji’s mother Nanu is with him most of the way, but she doesn’t play anything like ‘the speaker of truth to power’ role.
Really, almost all of the characters were pretty shallow and unsympathetic most of the way through. Only Jivan in his ‘fish out of water’ character at the start and Jeet in his ‘Edgar at the end’ were at all enjoyable. That ratio of unlikeability seems like heavy odds. Although you'd assume that the Cordelia and King Lear characters are meant to invoke some sympathy and audience identification, I never felt that for Sita and Bapuji. It is possible that a more cynical view was intended though.
Untranslated language
There is hardly any concession to the reader here. Only very rarely is an interjected Hindi or Urdu word or expression explained right away with its English equivalent added to the text. Some of the untranslated words will have a identifiable meaning in context in that they are obviously a food or a drink. Many can be interpreted by a guess, e.g. “Chup” seemed to be the equivalent of “Shut up” because people were silenced by it. There are no footnotes or afterword notes to explain anything.
This might not seem that daunting if the reader is prepared to accept some degree of language immersion, but there is rarely a page where several such words or expressions did not occur. I started marking them with the intention of looking them up but that was so slow and frustrating and was delaying my reading progress so much further that I ended up going back to the blur of guessed definitions by context for most of the book. That may not matter to some readers, but not understanding what I am reading is quite a giant dislike for me.
Sidenote: I had a brief hope that the North American edition of We That Are Young which is due to be published August 28, 2018 might include some footnotes for the non-UK non-India reader. Its now promised 496 page length doesn’t make that very likely. This present UK edition was 553 pages without footnotes.
#ThereIsAlwaysOne (or More)
With so many foreign words and expressions it is hard to judge the full extent of the typos and copy-editing errors but these ones jumped out for me i.e. were enough to stop my reading and cause me to go back to try to understand what was wrong with the sentence.
Pg. 140 “every grainstore and damn…” (s/b “dam”?, context seems to be that of building structures)
Pg. 208 “And Deepak’s grins form his place on the floor…” (s/b “from”?, context seems to be what location he is at).
Pg. 339 “an almost infinite variety meanings” (s/b “variety of meanings”?)
Pg. 368 “First I will explain to you the crore value of beauty…” (s/b “core”?)
Pg. 388 “He tries to reach the forth circle…” (s/b “fourth” based on the context of the nine circles of the slum that are mentioned)
Pg. 397 “She gives harsh laugh.” (s/b “a harsh laugh”?)
Pg. 405 “Nanu’s hands at grab at him” (s/b one extra “at”?)
Pg. 437 “each doorway covered with a think crewl-work curtain” (s/b “thick”?)
Pg. 481 “Bend your head, licks your lips…” (s/b “lick your lips”?)
Pg. 543 “Radha brings folds herself up…” (double verb seems to indicate that an editing choice was never made)
10 or so errors may not seem like many in a 553 page book, but when each of them causes you to stop dead and take the time to decipher what is wrong they become a regular distraction that takes you away from the magic of immersing yourself in a book. I may have missed more of these as there is always an element of mental autocorrect going on.
Conclusion
This is a rather extended review to try to pin down my problems with this book. It seems clear that I’m in the real minority here based on the many 4 and 5 star reviews and also the novel being shortlisted for several literary prizes so it is my own quirks and bugbears that took me out of this book. I applaud Preti Taneja for the ambition of her first novel and would certainly read her again.
My thanks to the Republic of Consciousness 2017 Shortlist Perk donation incentive and to Galley Beggar Press for my book copy. Both organizations are to be commended for their propagation of new indie publishers and writers.
A [2] average is the best compromise as my rating sense ranged from [1] to [3].
Intro
It was a real challenge to read and finish this book and I was proceeding for only 10 or so pages a day for the longest time. There were only brief segments that were compelling enough to get through more. I still find it an interesting exercise to try to define what my problems were, even if they might only be my own and no one else’s.
Structure and Pacing
The book is divided into 6 sections, 1 is assigned to each of the 5 major younger generation characters and a 6th general titular section represents a summing up. The patriarch character has occasional interjections into the younger generation sections. The beginning I “Jivan” and II “Gargi” sections were slow going, III “Radha” started to really pick it up, IV “Jeet” slowed it down all over again, V “Sita” crept to a tragic catharsis, VI “We That Are Young” seemed to just fizzle out into an obscurity where you are not quite sure what happened to everyone.
Characters
Since it is already telegraphed in the title (which is part of Edgar’s concluding speech) and as part of the synopsis and blurb information, there is no spoiler in saying that most of the WTAY characters have a parallel in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Depending on your level of familiarity with that play you can proceed without a refresher or do a quick survey through various online plot summaries. That of course may increase the predictability of the plot for some but I still found increased suspense from anticipating what the modern twists would be.
I rather enjoy The Fool as a favourite King Lear character so I was disappointed that there wasn’t an equivalent in WTAY. Bapuji’s mother Nanu is with him most of the way, but she doesn’t play anything like ‘the speaker of truth to power’ role.
Really, almost all of the characters were pretty shallow and unsympathetic most of the way through. Only Jivan in his ‘fish out of water’ character at the start and Jeet in his ‘Edgar at the end’ were at all enjoyable. That ratio of unlikeability seems like heavy odds. Although you'd assume that the Cordelia and King Lear characters are meant to invoke some sympathy and audience identification, I never felt that for Sita and Bapuji. It is possible that a more cynical view was intended though.
Untranslated language
There is hardly any concession to the reader here. Only very rarely is an interjected Hindi or Urdu word or expression explained right away with its English equivalent added to the text. Some of the untranslated words will have a identifiable meaning in context in that they are obviously a food or a drink. Many can be interpreted by a guess, e.g. “Chup” seemed to be the equivalent of “Shut up” because people were silenced by it. There are no footnotes or afterword notes to explain anything.
This might not seem that daunting if the reader is prepared to accept some degree of language immersion, but there is rarely a page where several such words or expressions did not occur. I started marking them with the intention of looking them up but that was so slow and frustrating and was delaying my reading progress so much further that I ended up going back to the blur of guessed definitions by context for most of the book. That may not matter to some readers, but not understanding what I am reading is quite a giant dislike for me.
Sidenote: I had a brief hope that the North American edition of We That Are Young which is due to be published August 28, 2018 might include some footnotes for the non-UK non-India reader. Its now promised 496 page length doesn’t make that very likely. This present UK edition was 553 pages without footnotes.
#ThereIsAlwaysOne (or More)
With so many foreign words and expressions it is hard to judge the full extent of the typos and copy-editing errors but these ones jumped out for me i.e. were enough to stop my reading and cause me to go back to try to understand what was wrong with the sentence.
Pg. 140 “every grainstore and damn…” (s/b “dam”?, context seems to be that of building structures)
Pg. 208 “And Deepak’s grins form his place on the floor…” (s/b “from”?, context seems to be what location he is at).
Pg. 339 “an almost infinite variety meanings” (s/b “variety of meanings”?)
Pg. 368 “First I will explain to you the crore value of beauty…” (s/b “core”?)
Pg. 388 “He tries to reach the forth circle…” (s/b “fourth” based on the context of the nine circles of the slum that are mentioned)
Pg. 397 “She gives harsh laugh.” (s/b “a harsh laugh”?)
Pg. 405 “Nanu’s hands at grab at him” (s/b one extra “at”?)
Pg. 437 “each doorway covered with a think crewl-work curtain” (s/b “thick”?)
Pg. 481 “Bend your head, licks your lips…” (s/b “lick your lips”?)
Pg. 543 “Radha brings folds herself up…” (double verb seems to indicate that an editing choice was never made)
10 or so errors may not seem like many in a 553 page book, but when each of them causes you to stop dead and take the time to decipher what is wrong they become a regular distraction that takes you away from the magic of immersing yourself in a book. I may have missed more of these as there is always an element of mental autocorrect going on.
Conclusion
This is a rather extended review to try to pin down my problems with this book. It seems clear that I’m in the real minority here based on the many 4 and 5 star reviews and also the novel being shortlisted for several literary prizes so it is my own quirks and bugbears that took me out of this book. I applaud Preti Taneja for the ambition of her first novel and would certainly read her again.
My thanks to the Republic of Consciousness 2017 Shortlist Perk donation incentive and to Galley Beggar Press for my book copy. Both organizations are to be commended for their propagation of new indie publishers and writers.
December 18, 2017
Almost literal application of King Lear to an Indian Company situation with family ownerships. But it is hard to replicate the same level of conspiracy, intrigue and killings in an Indian Company Boardroom context and that is the biggest chink in the story. Most plot points feel contrived, and some laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Using a Shakespeare tragedy to tell a story isn't all that new, and many have done a great job of it. Rohinton Mistry in Family Matters, Vishal Bhardwaj's movies for instance. But here, it just doesn't work. Seems to be more of a fixation on Lear than on what it is being applied to.
The writing is good, but can get very up and down. The dialogues are odd and traverse the broad spectrum between normal Hindi, Hinglish, Amar Chitra Katha Mahabharatha and even Shakespeare.
The characters tend to be just stand-ins for the King Lear characters and you know what's coming.
The blurbs talk about Kashmir, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the story by itself. It could have been anywhere.
The main pain point was the print quality which was just abysmal. It also could've done with a lot of editing, and quite a bit of proofreading! It is very annoying to have the 'offs' be 'ofs', and even at one point have a 'loose' instead of lose. There are glaring errors every few pages. Some of the sentences are really long, and it is hard to read them when you can't trust the text to stay true to grammar. I had to check once that this was a well-known publisher!
The writing is good, but can get very up and down. The dialogues are odd and traverse the broad spectrum between normal Hindi, Hinglish, Amar Chitra Katha Mahabharatha and even Shakespeare.
The characters tend to be just stand-ins for the King Lear characters and you know what's coming.
The blurbs talk about Kashmir, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the story by itself. It could have been anywhere.
The main pain point was the print quality which was just abysmal. It also could've done with a lot of editing, and quite a bit of proofreading! It is very annoying to have the 'offs' be 'ofs', and even at one point have a 'loose' instead of lose. There are glaring errors every few pages. Some of the sentences are really long, and it is hard to read them when you can't trust the text to stay true to grammar. I had to check once that this was a well-known publisher!
November 1, 2018
I've been trying my hardest to work with this book for nearly three weeks (ever since I finished the Jivan section). I took breaks to read other things. I started reading King Lear. I read other reviews. I tried longer and shorter reading sessions. I just never connected with it. It felt tedious, overwritten, the characters felt flat...
It was like an emperor-has-no-clothes moment as almost everyone I know has rated it 4 or 5 stars and most of the reviews seem glowing. About the best I can say for it, is that it got me to read King Lear, which I'm very much enjoying.
I think it was a recent passage I read from a Maggie Nelson book where she says you often ask of disappointing reading experiences: Did the book fail me or did I fail the book? Judging by the acclaim, I must have failed the book.
It was like an emperor-has-no-clothes moment as almost everyone I know has rated it 4 or 5 stars and most of the reviews seem glowing. About the best I can say for it, is that it got me to read King Lear, which I'm very much enjoying.
I think it was a recent passage I read from a Maggie Nelson book where she says you often ask of disappointing reading experiences: Did the book fail me or did I fail the book? Judging by the acclaim, I must have failed the book.
August 3, 2020
A more detailed review here on my blog: Sant Reads.
A little mad but very well written. I would have enjoyed it much more had I not known the plot to King Lear, but hey, that's the price you pay for knowing Shakespeare.
A little mad but very well written. I would have enjoyed it much more had I not known the plot to King Lear, but hey, that's the price you pay for knowing Shakespeare.
June 23, 2018
Has now won the Desmond Elliott prize. Richly deserved!
How to do justice to the ambition of this book? My favourite character was Jeet and I think he embodies its incredible scope. In fact he seems to spend the length of the book trying to work out who he is. At first this translates into a passion for using his father's wealth to con uneducated villagers out of priceless antiquities, and this could be seen as shameless opportunism and exploitation. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the object of his greed is his country's cultural heritage. He reaches a moment of crisis - it is not clear whether this is because of guilt at his immoral line of work, frustration at having to hide his relationship (with a man), or the ripping apart of the family he grew up with, when his Godfather Devraj, the super-rich mogul and King Lear figure, makes some eccentric decisions about his daughters' inheritances. He becomes an ascetic, and goes to live on one of India's infamous rubbish dumps - depicted with virtuoso detail and imagination as Dante's circles of hell. His identity crisis reaches a pinnacle when Devraj fails to recognise him, and adopts him for his (apparently opportunistic) moral crusade.
I really enjoyed the beautiful novella Kumkum Malhotra, and this book shows she can comfortably take on a variety of forms.
How to do justice to the ambition of this book? My favourite character was Jeet and I think he embodies its incredible scope. In fact he seems to spend the length of the book trying to work out who he is. At first this translates into a passion for using his father's wealth to con uneducated villagers out of priceless antiquities, and this could be seen as shameless opportunism and exploitation. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the object of his greed is his country's cultural heritage. He reaches a moment of crisis - it is not clear whether this is because of guilt at his immoral line of work, frustration at having to hide his relationship (with a man), or the ripping apart of the family he grew up with, when his Godfather Devraj, the super-rich mogul and King Lear figure, makes some eccentric decisions about his daughters' inheritances. He becomes an ascetic, and goes to live on one of India's infamous rubbish dumps - depicted with virtuoso detail and imagination as Dante's circles of hell. His identity crisis reaches a pinnacle when Devraj fails to recognise him, and adopts him for his (apparently opportunistic) moral crusade.
I really enjoyed the beautiful novella Kumkum Malhotra, and this book shows she can comfortably take on a variety of forms.
June 18, 2021
I can't really say more on this than my friend Max has said. Overall it was just too dense for me? I think it would work better as something inspired by King Lear and not a straight-up retelling.
December 26, 2018
One of those novels that feel like they contain whole universes. It's an Indian take on King Lear, but it works well both if you're familiar with Shakespeare's play and if you're not. If you're not, you can enjoy this as an epic tale of a powerful family's younger generation attempting to seize power from their elders, with plenty of backstabbing, violence, sex, and media manipulation. Plus, you won't know all the twists, and there are many. Also, it might be easier to find your own connections and interpretations: for example, I saw echoes of Trump vs. Clinton in the struggle between the head of the family, Bapuji, and his eldest daughter, Gargi--Gargi is competent, experienced, with little time for gender stereotypes, and would objectively make the best director for the family company, while Bapuji travels around the country incoherently spewing misogyny and lies against her at rallies. But, as I said, if you *are* familiar with King Lear, you'll get a lot out of this novel as well: its feminist twists, its rich empathy for the story's supposed villains, its focus on the younger characters, its social consciousness, and of course the transposition to an Indian setting. This novel came out in the UK in 2017 and in the US in 2018, but as far as I can tell it wasn't in nearly as many best-of-the-year lists as it should have been in either country.
Would also very much recommend this podcast interview with the author: https://podtail.com/en/podcast/shakes...
Would also very much recommend this podcast interview with the author: https://podtail.com/en/podcast/shakes...
November 9, 2018
It should have been called - “we that are desperately trying to retell an epic story by setting it in a country and context about which we have extremely shallow knowledge but will pretend as we spent some summers there and foreign audiences wouldn’t be able to tell anyway and who cares if it is cloying and inaccurate and grating and stereotypical and references the only movie about India we know way too many times and we can get away with making people eat chholey with saag meat on private jets and put Zara and Prada in the same shopping class and have a bungalow in Delhi be worth only a few million rupees and have all Indians be obsessed with laddus and reference Martin Amis and insert mediocre verse in the middle of slow moving plot to make the book appear more “literary” and then disguise all this and the poor writing by trying to adopt a fever dream style of writing to create a mad king ambience but failing...because we are young and we have no experience of that which we write and because we are young and still have not found our voice and merely mimic a dozen different voices which come and go in patches and because we are young and have ambition but doing it the hard long way with research and multiple rewrites is just not the way we do it anymore because...yes, we are young”
Read
February 4, 2019I'm not sure that a rating would do this complicated, layered book justice. It's not just a retelling of King Lear in modern India, and if you read it for that alone, you'll be disappointed. There's so much more going on, and while I agree the book could have used some editing, I read it compulsively.
It was hugely entertaining and engrossing, and you do not need to understand Hindi in order to follow what's going, if you don't let it bother. And if you need to read books where you "like" the characters, then this probably isn't for you. But it's a huge, ambitious book, and I love it for that. Updating to say: two weeks after finishing it, I can't stop thinking about it. That in itself requires more than 5 stars--when I finish a book, I'm usually done with this.
It was hugely entertaining and engrossing, and you do not need to understand Hindi in order to follow what's going, if you don't let it bother. And if you need to read books where you "like" the characters, then this probably isn't for you. But it's a huge, ambitious book, and I love it for that. Updating to say: two weeks after finishing it, I can't stop thinking about it. That in itself requires more than 5 stars--when I finish a book, I'm usually done with this.
March 6, 2018
3.5. That took pretty long. Preti Taneja's prose is beautiful and layered, which suits an adaptation of King Lear. Unfortunately, her characters are not consistent. I had this feeling that the male characters were very weakly written. The women in the book are brilliant though, so layered and conflict-filled that you cannot help but love them.
And maybe this is just me, but I expected much more from the climax. It seemed too serendipitous to me.
And maybe this is just me, but I expected much more from the climax. It seemed too serendipitous to me.
August 10, 2018
This is the second "Lear" I've read in about a year, and while Dunbar, the Hogarth update version, written by Edward St. Aubyn was closer in tone to the original, this one, set in India was a more in depth rendering. I learned more about New Delhi rituals and customs, which slowed the progress of the narrative, and it could have been trimmed here and there. But the bones were present and made for pleasurable analysis.
February 15, 2018
This sprawling tragic novel about a billionaire Indian family based on Shakespeare's King Lear is full of madness, corruption, murder, and deceit. Like Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, the setting is largely Delhi and Kashmir. Taneja does an excellent job portraying modern-day India's new rich, the country's economic turmoil, and all its walks of life.
June 2, 2019
Overwritten. Tedious. A lot of hard work to get to the end - and not even worth it. A modern retelling of King Lear, which I haven't read, and which one doesn't have to have read to appreciate this. But the writing was all over the place, there was so much said and so little to take away.
I picked it up because of the praise it was getting on a couple of podcasts, it's won some literary prizes and some readers really seemed to have loved it - but ultimately the book is completely lost on me. The text is so dense, so voluminous and so cryptic, it's irritating - because you really have to work out in your head what happened.
Why can't the writing be straightforward?
I just didn't enjoy it. Though I forced myself to finish it.
I picked it up because of the praise it was getting on a couple of podcasts, it's won some literary prizes and some readers really seemed to have loved it - but ultimately the book is completely lost on me. The text is so dense, so voluminous and so cryptic, it's irritating - because you really have to work out in your head what happened.
Why can't the writing be straightforward?
I just didn't enjoy it. Though I forced myself to finish it.
September 15, 2021
short version: mixed feelings but holy SHIT that was a wild fucking ride. long version:
THE GOOD
-this is a king lear retelling. i love king lear. we know this. the transportation of this story to modern-day delhi is done seamlessly in terms of characters, and it's absolutely fascinating to explore; the themes of the original lear are magnified & the explorations of many kinds of indian identity (jivan, who’s been in america for 15 years, has an especially compelling relationship to his home country) was probably one of my favorite parts of this book
-all of these characters are SO fascinating and compelling both as king lear characters adapted and as characters in their own right; the different voices in each segment of narration are so excellently done (i’ll never not be going mad over the fragmentation of jeet’s narrative) and each character was compelling even if i didn't. personally. like them akshdfbdsfs
-the prose is absolutely GORGEOUS
THE QUESTIONABLE
-the prose is. maybe too gorgeous. while it was absolutely lovely, it got kind of dense at times; there were parts where i wasn't cheered to pick the book back up (though, granted, i was reading war and peace at the same time as i read this, and two dense books at once wasn't my smartest idea, so take this bullet point with a healthy grain of salt)
-my biggest issue is that i’m not sure how well the plot stands on its own without the context of king lear. like, i have the context of king lear, but even then i wasn’t sure why exactly jeet decided to flee when he did; i kept wondering what prompted it and if i’d missed something (because his convo with jivan was actually much less pointed than the equivalent scene in lear). multiple times, i found myself wondering if people who aren't familiar with king lear would find the plot confusing or just unnecessarily complex.
-the pacing also felt a little lopsided -- i feel like the beginning “acts” of lear got the most time/focus, and then the end wrapped up so fast it left me blinking and sort of confused. it can’t be that there wasn’t room to elaborate on the very last set of chapters, because there was plenty of room to describe radha and her husband having sex in their private jet or the minutia of jeet’s daily life in the basti. and sure, based on what we WERE given and the plot of lear, i could guess how stuff ended for everyone -- but it still felt like we fast-forwarded jarringly; for a book that gave so much lavish description to its set-up, it seemed like it sort of just... stopped at the end. (of course, you could argue lear does that as well, but that then brings us back to whether this can stand on its own, etc etc.)
i think my bottom line here is that this book is absolutely gorgeous and very well-drawn and that i'm glad i read it! but, mostly because of the wonky pacing and the time it took to get through, i'm not sure i would read it again.
THE GOOD
-this is a king lear retelling. i love king lear. we know this. the transportation of this story to modern-day delhi is done seamlessly in terms of characters, and it's absolutely fascinating to explore; the themes of the original lear are magnified & the explorations of many kinds of indian identity (jivan, who’s been in america for 15 years, has an especially compelling relationship to his home country) was probably one of my favorite parts of this book
-all of these characters are SO fascinating and compelling both as king lear characters adapted and as characters in their own right; the different voices in each segment of narration are so excellently done (i’ll never not be going mad over the fragmentation of jeet’s narrative) and each character was compelling even if i didn't. personally. like them akshdfbdsfs
-the prose is absolutely GORGEOUS
THE QUESTIONABLE
-the prose is. maybe too gorgeous. while it was absolutely lovely, it got kind of dense at times; there were parts where i wasn't cheered to pick the book back up (though, granted, i was reading war and peace at the same time as i read this, and two dense books at once wasn't my smartest idea, so take this bullet point with a healthy grain of salt)
-my biggest issue is that i’m not sure how well the plot stands on its own without the context of king lear. like, i have the context of king lear, but even then i wasn’t sure why exactly jeet decided to flee when he did; i kept wondering what prompted it and if i’d missed something (because his convo with jivan was actually much less pointed than the equivalent scene in lear). multiple times, i found myself wondering if people who aren't familiar with king lear would find the plot confusing or just unnecessarily complex.
-the pacing also felt a little lopsided -- i feel like the beginning “acts” of lear got the most time/focus, and then the end wrapped up so fast it left me blinking and sort of confused. it can’t be that there wasn’t room to elaborate on the very last set of chapters, because there was plenty of room to describe radha and her husband having sex in their private jet or the minutia of jeet’s daily life in the basti. and sure, based on what we WERE given and the plot of lear, i could guess how stuff ended for everyone -- but it still felt like we fast-forwarded jarringly; for a book that gave so much lavish description to its set-up, it seemed like it sort of just... stopped at the end. (of course, you could argue lear does that as well, but that then brings us back to whether this can stand on its own, etc etc.)
i think my bottom line here is that this book is absolutely gorgeous and very well-drawn and that i'm glad i read it! but, mostly because of the wonky pacing and the time it took to get through, i'm not sure i would read it again.
December 6, 2022
This long and dense novel took me quite a while to finish but the reading journey was immensely rewarding and satisfying.
Rich and poetic, We That Are Young is an exquisite King Lear retelling set in modern India.
Rich and poetic, We That Are Young is an exquisite King Lear retelling set in modern India.
September 13, 2018
An intricate, successful adaptation, modernization, and localization of King Lear but too long in my opinion.
May 2, 2020
This book had so much potential. It follows a large family in India who are all big players in a huge company, and is about how possession and public image causes them to descend into brutal and manipulative behaviour.
This sounds like a fascinating premise, but the pieces didn't come together right at all. The worst aspect of the book was the writing style, for its inconsistency. Taneja writes gorgeous prose, but her lovely language means that the actual events she is trying to explain are lost. At times I had to message friends, who were reading the book alongside me, and confirm an event had happened, since the novel's physicality was hidden by pretty words. Perhaps that is symbolic of one of the book's messages, but it wasn't pulled off very well. This is a shame, as it meant I wasn't invested in the high stakes events taking place, which had very serious consequences.
Another contributor was the novel's structure. We follow the 5 main young adults in the company, who are all children of the company head or his right hand man. Rather than alternating between these perspectives, it had 5 chunks each dedicated to one character. This structure can be successful in other stories, but in We That Are Young it meant that we received an info dump for each character before moving onto the next, and we couldn't see how new changes in the plot affected the characters whose perspective had already occurred.
I never thought to DNF the book, as I was reading it for a book club and wanted to be able to fully discuss it, but if I had been reading this alone I would definitely not have made it through Jeet's section. A good story, but would have perhaps been served better by a different writer.
This sounds like a fascinating premise, but the pieces didn't come together right at all. The worst aspect of the book was the writing style, for its inconsistency. Taneja writes gorgeous prose, but her lovely language means that the actual events she is trying to explain are lost. At times I had to message friends, who were reading the book alongside me, and confirm an event had happened, since the novel's physicality was hidden by pretty words. Perhaps that is symbolic of one of the book's messages, but it wasn't pulled off very well. This is a shame, as it meant I wasn't invested in the high stakes events taking place, which had very serious consequences.
Another contributor was the novel's structure. We follow the 5 main young adults in the company, who are all children of the company head or his right hand man. Rather than alternating between these perspectives, it had 5 chunks each dedicated to one character. This structure can be successful in other stories, but in We That Are Young it meant that we received an info dump for each character before moving onto the next, and we couldn't see how new changes in the plot affected the characters whose perspective had already occurred.
I never thought to DNF the book, as I was reading it for a book club and wanted to be able to fully discuss it, but if I had been reading this alone I would definitely not have made it through Jeet's section. A good story, but would have perhaps been served better by a different writer.
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