The English Problem

A young Indian man is tapped to help his countryΓÇÖs fight for freedomΓÇöbut his heart engages him in a different war. ΓÇ£Grand,sweepingmesmerizing . . . a richly detailedpolitically profound story of loveof migrationof individuals caught up in the great convulsions of history.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöJoseph OΓÇÖNeillPEN/Faulkner AwardΓÇôwinning author of Godwin Shiv Advani is an eighteen-year-old growing up in India. But he is no ordinary young man. Shiv has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to Englandlearn their lawsand then return home and help drive the British out of India. Before he leaveshis family insists he fulfill his arranged marriageand he is hastily betrothed to a young woman he hardly knows. He arrives in London and soon discovers a world he is both repelled by and drawn to. Shiv knows his duty: get inlearn the letter of the lawget out. But as anyone who has ever lived in a British colony can tell youΓÇ£the English ProblemΓÇ¥ is multifaceted. The racist colonialism of ΓÇ£the empire on which the sun never setsΓÇ¥ seeps into everythingΓÇönot just landed territoriesbut territories of the mind: literaturelanguagereligionsexualityself-identity. Soon the people Shiv sought to be liberated from will be the people he desperately wants to be a part of. In the endShiv must fight not only for his countryΓÇÖs liberation but also his own. Set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movementwith appearances by historical figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Mahatma GandhiThe English Problem is so self-assured and ambitiousit is hard to believe it is a debut.