The poser

During a violent rainstorm, at the beginning of the twentieth century in a remote corner of India, an English soldier and a Hindu bride fall into each other's arms. Nine months later a boy is born. His name is Pran. Half Indian, half British. This panoramic story, which takes place successively in India, Oxford, Paris and West Africa, is about him.
At a very young age, Pran develops his survival strategy. As a slut in the excessive luxury of a decadent oriental palace where the British 'Empire' is present in full corruption; as a young man with a Scottish missionary and his wife in Bombay; and as a 'white' student in Oxford.
For this genius 'poseur' there are always two options: adapt or lose'
The Poser is a great literary novel in the category of Wild Swans, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Perfume, The English Patient. Superiorly written, panoramic, dramatic, accessible and also funny. Narrative power, dizzying imagination. The setting is exotic, the narrative scope would not be out of place for Dickens. And with a main character that we have not yet seen in contemporary literature, while his destiny (between two cultures, between two identities) is global and current.
Hari Kunzru was born in London in 1969 and grew up in Essex. The writer, like the main character in The Poser, is the child of a mixed Indian-English marriage. Hari's father, a surgeon, came to England from India in the 1960s and married a British woman there. Kunzru wrote for newspapers, magazines and websites. The Poser is his debut.