‘There is a buoyant energy and hilarity to this account of an Indian student seeking the wide world
through the women he meets, but one laughs with growing unease as a darker undercurrent is
slowly revealed.’ —Kiran Desai
The Lovers is about a man in search of a love story. This man, our narrator, is Kailash—a new
immigrant, eager to shine. His friends teasingly call him Kalashnikov, and sometimes AK-47, even
AK. In his account of his years at a university in New York, AK takes us through the bittersweet
arc of youth and love. There is discovery and disappointment. There are the brilliant women,
Jennifer and Nina and Cai Yan. There is the political texture of campus life and the charismatic
professor overseeing these young men and women, Ehsaan Ali (modelled on the real-life Eqbal
Ahmad). Manifest in AK’s first years and first loves is the wild enthusiasm of youth, its idealism,
chaotic desires and confusions.
A decidedly modern novel that melds story and reportage, anecdote and annotation, picture
and text, fragment and essay, The Lovers reminds us of the works of John Berger and Teju
Cole. Funny, meditative, and shot through with waves of longing, the book explores feelings of
discomfort about cultural misunderstandings and the lack of clarity between men and women.
At heart though, it is an investigation of love—‘love despite, or in spite of; love beyond and across
dividing lines’.
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