The Mammaries of the Welfare State
0-670-87934-7
The Mammaries of the Welfare State is an English-language Indian novel, the sequel to Upamanyu Chatterjee's debut novel, English, August, also told from the perspective of the fictional character Agastya Sen.[1] It won the Sahitya Akademi Award (English) in 2004.[2] The novel tells the story of political bureaucracy in the fictional state of Madna when an epidemic breaks out.[3] The title derives from a line of dialog in the novel, where a civil servant states "In my eight years of service, I haven't come across a single case in which everybody concerned didn't try to milk dry the boobs of the Welfare State".[3]
Critical reception
Anand Vardhan states that the novel anticipated India's initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in its portrayal of a pandemic where civil servants are preoccupied more with "procedure and spin".[3] Anjana Sharma, writing for The Hindu, says that it "dares to voice a moral outrage that very rarely finds its way into fiction".[4] Various reviews praise the humour of the novel as a "hilarious satire",[5] "funny"[6] and "a book of laughter and disgust".[1]
It received some criticism for its structure, focus and length. Vardhan criticizes the novel's "scattered plot and meandering narratives",[3] while Sharma concurs that it is "a bit repetitive".[4] The Modern Novel states that it "does drag out somewhat" and "you just want him to get on with the story. Which he doesn’t."[6]
References
- ^ a b Prasannarajan, S. (2 July 2012). "Book review: The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Agastya Sen". India Today. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
- ^ "Sahitya Akademi Awards listings". Sahitya Akademi, Official website.
- ^ a b c d Vardhan, Anand (28 December 2020). "A mess foretold: Reading Mammaries of the Welfare State amid a pandemic". Newslaundry. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ a b "The Mammaries of the Welfare State - Upamanyu Chatterjee". www.complete-review.com. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ Sandhu, Nirmal (7 January 2001). "India's uncivil service". The Tribune. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ^ a b "Chatterjee: The Mammaries of the Welfare State | The Modern Novel". www.themodernnovel.org. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- v
- t
- e
- The Guide by R. K. Narayan (1960)
- The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao (1964)
- The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin by Verrier Elwin (1965)
- Shadow From Ladakh by Bhabani Bhattacharya (1967)
- An Artist in Life by Niharranjan Ray (1969)
- Morning Face by Mulk Raj Anand (1971)
- Scholar Extraordinary by Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1975)
- Jawaharlal Nehru by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)
- Azadi by Chaman Nahal (1977)
- Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai (1978)
- Inside the Haveli by Rama Mehta (1979)
- On the Mother by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1980)
- Relationship by Jayanta Mahapatra (1981)
- The Last Labyrinth by Arun Joshi (1982)
- Latter-Day Psalms by Nissim Ezekiel (1983)
- The Keeper of the Dead by Keki N. Daruwalla (1984)
- Collected Poems by Kamala Das (1985)
- Rich Like Us by Nayantara Sahgal (1986)
- Trapfalls In the Sky by Shiv K. Kumar (1987)
- The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth (1988)
- The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh (1989)
- That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande (1990)
- The Trotter-Nama by Allan Sealy (1991)
- Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra by Ruskin Bond (1992)
- After Amnesia by G. N. Devy (1993)
- Serendip by Dom Moraes (1994)
- Memories of Rain by Sunetra Gupta (1996)
- Final Solutions and Other Plays by Mahesh Dattani (1998)
- The Collected Poems by A. K. Ramanujan (1999)
- Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar (2000)
- Rajaji: A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi (2001)
- A New World by Amit Chaudhuri (2002)
- The Perishable Empire by Meenakshi Mukherjee (2003)
- The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Upamanyu Chatterjee (2004)
- The Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy (2005)
- The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa (2006)
- Disorderly Women by Malathi Rao (2007)
- Mahabharata: An Inquiry into the Human Condition by Chaturvedi Badrinath (2009)
- The Book of Rachel by Esther David (2010)
- India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha (2011)
- These Errors are Correct by Jeet Thayil (2012)
- Laburnum For My Head by Temsula Ao (2013)
- Trying to Say Goodbye by Adil Jussawalla (2014)
- Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry (2015)
- Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto (2016)
- The Black Hill by Mamang Dai (2017)
- The Blind Lady's Descendants by Anees Salim (2018)
- An Era of Darkness by Shashi Tharoor (2019)
- When God is a Traveller by Arundhathi Subramaniam (2020)
- Things to Leave Behind by Namita Gokhale (2021)
- All The Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy (2022)
This article about a 2000s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
- v
- t
- e