19 Sep / The Perfect Man by Naeem Murr
Naeem Murr’s latest novel is a near-perfect coming-of-age story about an Indian-born, London-raised young man, dropped into the American Midwest virtually without support, and was last year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Europe and South Asia for Best Book, as well as a 2006 Booker long-lister.
Rajiv Travers arrives as a scared young boy in the strained London home of his British uncle after being abandoned in India by his missing Indian mother and his irresponsible British father. When he proves to be no more than a half-breed embarrassment, especially for his cold, brutal aunt-in-law, he’s sent away again, at age 12, this time to another uncle in tiny Pisgah, Missouri. When that uncle promptly commits suicide, Raj becomes the unlikely charge of his uncle’s lover, Ruth, a writer of steamy romances who shows little emotion in her own life, who most definitely never wanted children. Raj’s quiet presence soon changes that.
Raj finds himself befriended by two local children, headstrong Annie and gentle Lewis. The threesome will remain bittersweetly entwined by both joy and tragedy for the rest of their lives. In 1950s middle America, the small town is filled with immigrants from all over world, who live by their too-many misconceptions about people different from themselves. From murder to incest to adultery to unbridled racism, Pisgah is anything but a pastoral refuge. Murr weaves an astonishing story of one unlikely immigrant young boy’s journey to (perfect) manhood, the lives he touches, and the identity he must create and protect for himself in order to survive.
Tidbit: Murr was a delighfully erudite and entertaining guest at SALTAF 2008 (South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival), a much-anticipated, highly-attended annual fall event sponsored by the Smithsonian APA Program and NetSAP-DC.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2007 (United States)