The dizzying high point of Annapurna Potluri's The Grammarian occurs when its two main characters, who differ greatly in origin and circumstance, reach a moment of near-sublime connection. One of them is a Frenchman, the other an Indian girl, and the moment--though innocent--is fraught with taboos.
The beauty and hope of this particular moment is fatally ruptured, but not before it encapsulates the ambitious themes of Potluri's sweeping debut novel--the limitations and possibilities of language, the struggle for love and freedom, an impassable cultural and political divide and the ultimately failed attempt to bridge it.
Written in supple, sensuous prose that aches with memory and regret, The Grammarian unfolds as handsome Alexandre, a young and ambitious academic, travels from Paris to southern India in 1911 to write a grammar of Telugu ("an agglutinating language; a sentence could stream off like bars of opera"). He is hosted by wealthy Shiva Adivi, an "aristocrat sympathetic to Europeans," who has two teenage daughters: the younger radiantly, unfairly beautiful, and the elder, Anjali, disfigured by a childhood illness.
Alexandre and Anjali, both outsiders, form an unlikely friendship. He is drawn to her curiosity and intelligence, while she yearns for love and recognition untouched by the pity and barely veiled disgust she's used to. Though Alexandre's impulsive and tragically misguided kindness has devastating repercussions for her, it also opens her to a joy and freedom she's never known.
Potluri writes with uncommon elegance, her keen empathy and flair for metaphor in artful marriage with her own background in linguistics. --Hannah Calkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice