The Elephanta Suite

A master of the travel narrative weaves three intertwined novellas of Westerners transformed by their sojourns in India. This startling far-reaching book captures the tumult ambition hardship and serenity that mark today’s India. Theroux’s Westerners risk venturing far beyond the subcontinent’s well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A middle-aged couple on vacation veers heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds succor in Mumbai’s reeking slums. And a young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore. We also meet Indian characters as singular as they are reflective of the country’s subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar an earnest young striver whose personality is rewired by acquiring an American accent a miracle-working guru and others. As ever Theroux’s portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect. The Elephanta Suite urges us toward a fresh compelling and often inspiring notion of what India is and what it can do to those who try to lose—or find—themselves there.