The Trotternama

In the eighteenth century Justin Aloysius Trotter or the Great Trotter tumbles earthward to his death while surveying his vast lands and admiring his wealth from a hot air balloon. Two centuries later the Seventh Trotter Eugene Aloysius narrates the epic story of a family at the fraying ends of its past glory. Laced with verses advertisements journal entries elegies quotations and learned interpolations The Trotter-Nama is the chronicle of seven generations of Trotters as they struggle to hold on to their shifting identities. They are Indian at lunch and British at dinner eat curry with a dessert spoon and dessert with a teaspoon. Over the years the expanding clan of Trotters produces soldiers artists poets politicians-even a dhoti-wearing nationalist. As their excesses slowly turn to improvidence and the family chateaux is turned into a hotel their increasing numbers and declining fortunes strain against a rapidly changing country. Allan Sealy's epic comedy of manners about Britain and India's motley offspring is as much a treat today as it was thirty years ago. About the Author Allan Sealy has authored eight books and won many awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Padma Shri. His novelThe Everest Hotel A Calendar was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker prize.