All About H Hatterr (Aleph)

Wildly funny and very bizarre, All About H. Hatterr is one of the most eccentric and absorbing works modern English has produced. H. Hatterr is the son of a European merchant officer and a lady from Penang who has been raised and educated in missionary schools in Calcutta. His story is of his search for enlightenment. In the course of visiting seven Oriental cities, he consults with seven sages, each of whom specializes in a different aspect of ‘Living’. Each teacher delivers himself of a great ‘Generality’, each great Generality launches a new great ‘Adventure’, from each of which Hatterr escapes not so much greatly edified as by the skin of his teeth. The book is a comic extravaganza. Salman Rushdie says, ‘Hatterr’s dazzling, puzzling, leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language.’