The Beautiful & the Damned

Siddhartha Deb grew up in a remote town in the north-eastern hills of India and made his way to the United States via a fellowship at Columbia. Six years after leaving home he returned as an undercover reporter for the Guardian working at a call centre in Delhi in 2004 a time when globalization was fast proceeding and Thomas L. Friedman declared the world flat. Deb's experience interviewing the call-centre staff led him to undertake this book and travel throughout the subcontinent.The Beautiful and the Damned examines India's many contradictions through various individual and extraordinary perspectives. With lyrical and commanding prose Deb introduces the reader to an unforgettable group of Indians including a Gatsby-like mogul in Delhi whose hobby is producing big-budget gangster films that no one sees; a wiry dusty farmer named Gopeti whose village is plagued by suicides and was the epicentre of a riot; and a sad-eyed waitress named Esther who has set aside her dual degrees in biochemistry and botany to serve Coca-Cola to arms dealers at an upscale hotel called Shangri La.Like no other writer Deb humanizes the post-globalization experience--its advantages failures and absurdities. India is a country where you take a nap and someone has stolen your job where you buy a BMW but still have to idle for cows crossing your path. Available for the first time with the controversial and previously unpublished first chapter The Beautiful and the Damned is as important and incisive today as it was when it was first published. About the Author Born in north-eastern India in 1970 Siddhartha Deb is the author of two novels. A contributing editor toThe New Republic Deb's journalism essays and reviews have appeared in theGuardian the New York Timesn+1Caravan the Nation the Baffler and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Society of Authors the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University and the Howard Foundation at Brown University.