Ayyan Mani will not be constrained by Indian traditions. Despite working at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai as the lowly personal assistant to a brilliant but insufferable astronomer, he dreams of more for himself and his family.
Ever wily and ambitious, Ayyan weaves two plots: the first to cheer up his weary, soap-opera-addicted wife by creating outrageous fictions around their ten-year-old son; the other to sabotage the married director by using his boss’s seeming romance with the institute’s first female—and very attractive—researcher. Meanwhile, as the institute’s Brahmins wage a vicious war over theories about alien life, Ayyan sees his deceptions intertwining and setting in motion a series of extraordinary events he cannot stop. Unfailingly funny and irreverent, Serious Men is at once a hilarious portrayal of runaway egos and ambitions and a moving portrait of love and its strange workings.
One of 2010’s “First Novels to Savor.” —Sunday Telegraph
- ISBN10 0393338592
- ISBN13 9780393338591
- Publish Date 31 August 2010 (first published 10 June 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 12 December 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint WW Norton & Co
- Format Paperback
- Pages 318
- Language English