The Romantics

Samar, a young man of limited means, moves to Benares, the ancient city of learning, to lose himself in the world of books. There he meets Rajesh, a poor student, and Catherine, a young French woman, who shows him a very different side of his own country—and self. A resonant and ambitious novel, The Romantics is both the story of a sentimental education and of the widening fault lines within contemporary India.