In The Beautiful and the Damned, Indian-born novelist and journalist Siddhartha Deb attempts to understand the realities of the New India that has emerged with the rise of computer technology and international call centers.
Deb, author of The Point of Return, which was a 2003 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, presents his findings in a series of character sketches. A Gatsby-like businessman is famous for being famous. A computer engineer composes poetry in binary code and inscribes it on the blank portions of the computer chips his company manufactures. A desperate seed broker teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. A young waitress in New Delhi agonizes over her future. The author introduces us to those who have succeeded in the new economy, those who have forgotten and--most vividly--those who aspire to success.
Ultimately, The Beautiful and the Damned tells us as much about Deb as it does about India. He admits from the beginning that questions about his own identity are part of the larger puzzle of what India has become. Deb's interactions with the Indians he interviews are a critical part of each story. The book takes the form of an expatriate journey in which Deb travels through an India that is "sometimes intimately familiar and sometimes completely unknown."
The Beautiful and the Damned is De Tocqueville in miniature, with beautiful prose, thoughtful analysis and strong characterization. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins