Serious Men - Manu Joseph

A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbai's humid tenements. n nAyyan Mani will not be constrained by Indian traditions. Despite working at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai as the lowly personal assistant to a brilliant but insufferable astronomer, he dreams of more for himself and his family.n n nn nEver wily and ambitious, Ayyan weaves two plots: the first to cheer up his weary, soap-opera-addicted wife by creating outrageous fictions around their ten-year-old son; the other to sabotage the married director by using his boss's seeming romance with the institute's first female--and very attractive--researcher. Meanwhile, as the institute's Brahmins wage a vicious war over theories about alien life, Ayyan sees his deceptions intertwining and setting in motion a series of extraordinary events he cannot stop. Unfailingly funny and irreverent, Serious Men is at once a hilarious portrayal of runaway egos and ambitions and a moving portrait of love and its strange workings.n n nn n One of 2010's First Novels to Savor. --Sunday Telegraphn