Anurag Mathur
Author of Inscrutable Americans
About the Author
Works by Anurag Mathur
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Mathur, Anurag
- Legal name
- Mathur, Anurag
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- India
- Education
- St. Stephen's College, Delhi (BA)
University of Tulsa (MA)
Members
Reviews
The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur
It's a charming, amusing, easy read about a high-caste Indian who spends the senior year of his undergrad at a small university in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, in the 90s, you can imagine the amount of whiteness and racism in a small town. This is the story of Gopal's culture shock.
I liked the first half of the book best. The ending was a little unsatisfying.
Gopal, an Indian student in the Midwest to study chemistry for a year, gets both immersed in and immune to American culture. The entertaining novel, set in the 1980s, finds Gopal enjoying snow, haggling at the mall, and being so curious as to why his first American friend announces, "I'm Randy" (Gopal has been schooled in English via Penthouse Letters). Never condescending to either culture, Gopal's letters to his younger brother at home reveal how much he has absorbed and how much of his family and culture are ingrained. This is a wonderful tale, full of warmth, humor, and sexual misadventures.… (more)
What's not to like? A funny take on an Indian boy's first experience of America. Of course, this was just the prototype of all the novels that were to follow, and all the ABCD movies that were to be made. This was the original and the funniest, most honest response of an Indian to America.
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Statistics
- Works
- 8
- Members
- 613
- Popularity
- #41,002
- Rating
- 3.0
- Reviews
- 10
- ISBNs
- 14
- Languages
- 1