No Direction Rome

From the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar Award 2014

'Violently funny and epically tragic Barua's writing is tragicomic genius. F∗∗∗ing brilliant.' - Janice Pariat author of Boats on Land and Seahorse

A portrait of the stoner as a young man.

Krantik is cynical jaded and utterly bored. He's also a paranoid hypochondriac. An Indian working in Rome he drifts aimlessly through a failed engagement with the assistance of several intoxicants and a short-lived love affair. Krantik's personal revelations and delusions of grandeur - exquisitely funny and devastatingly poignant - expose the hollowness of social mores and the anxieties of a rootless generation. This is a clever bizarre tour de force part noir part philosophical and entirely likable.

Kerouac meets Joyce meets Harold & Kumar meets Jonathan Lethem in this wildly inventive love letter to a city that critically acclaimed author Kaushik Barua has lived in and loved for years.