Life and Times of Mr. S

'Life and Times of Mr S' worked for me like magic. It unsettled my notion of what was real, what possible, and resettled that notion in a strange luminous place. Narayanan uses what he sees as singular illusions - class, caste, family, for example - to conjure a "pluriverse" of his own, crowded with multiple, often polymorphous identities that, by their very nature, could be illusions too. This recalls the work (and play) of magician-acrobats and Narayanan is one of them. Questioning the very nature of reality and the possibility of finding true answers, he pushes at limits, walking a dangerous tightrope. I am dazzled by his dexterity.'-Adil Jussawalla 'This unique and captivating book takes the experiments of G.V. Desani as a starting point and composes a chronicle of living language enacted around the person of Mr S. Lyric and narrative, parodic and reflective, Vivek Narayanan gives us a work of "woof-confidence" rich with mini-disquisitions on desire, guilt, food, caste, malls, etc. It jiggles the hearticles, slugs back the memory jug, and palavers with a laptop. Often on the heels of a round of elaborate, ebullient passages, the reader is brought to a complete stop: "Only in mind's stillness shall the wood apple appear." 'Life and Times of Mr S is a brilliant homage to an ever-morphing language and land.' -C.D. Wright