Life And Times Of Mr S

'Life and Times of Mr S' worked for me like magic. It unsettled my notion of what was real what possible and resettled that notion in a strange luminous place. Narayanan uses what he sees as singular illusions - class caste family for example - to conjure a "pluriverse" of his own crowded with multiple often polymorphous identities that by their very nature could be illusions too. This recalls the work (and play) of magician-acrobats and Narayanan is one of them. Questioning the very nature of reality and the possibility of finding true answers he pushes at limits walking a dangerous tightrope. I am dazzled by his dexterity.'-Adil Jussawalla 'This unique and captivating book takes the experiments of G.V. Desani as a starting point and composes a chronicle of living language enacted around the person of Mr S. Lyric and narrative parodic and reflective Vivek Narayanan gives us a work of "woof-confidence" rich with mini-disquisitions on desire guilt food caste malls etc. It jiggles the hearticles slugs back the memory jug and palavers with a laptop. Often on the heels of a round of elaborate ebullient passages the reader is brought to a complete stop: "Only in mind's stillness shall the wood apple appear." 'Life and Times of Mr S is a brilliant homage to an ever-morphing language and land.' -C.D. Wright