Deb, Siddhartha 1970-

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DEB, Siddhartha 1970-

PERSONAL:

Born 1970, in Shillong, India. Education: Attended Columbia University.

ADDRESSES:

Office—c/o Author Mail, Ecco Press, 10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022. Agent—David Miller, Rogers, Coleridge, and White, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England.

CAREER:

Writer and journalist.

WRITINGS:

The Point of Return, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Lingua Franca, London Review of Books, New Statesman, and the Guardian.

SIDELIGHTS:

Siddartha Deb honed his writing skills as a journalist in Calcutta and New Delhi and writing for Lingua Franca, the London Review of Books, New Statesman, and the Guardian. Debmovedtothe United States in 1998 on a literature fellowship and decided stay in New York City. The son of Bangladeshi refugees, Deb was born in the small town of Shillong in Northeast India. His debut novel, The Point of No Return, is set in a nameless small town, apparently based on Shillong. Many critics consider the novel largely autobiographical but in an interview for the Hindu, Deb admits only to using elements of his childhood as a jumping-off point to a purely fictional story, saying he had "no intentions of presenting a factual picture of life in Shillong in the '70s and the '80s."

This coming-of-age tale has at its center a father and son at odds with each other and out of place in the world they inhabit. Dr. Dam is a veterinarian and civil servant who, as a young man, fled his native Bengal when India was partitioned in 1947. Relocating in the Indian state of Assam, he sacrifices his life to ensure that his younger brothers are settled, waiting until middle age before marrying. His only son, Babu, the novel's narrator, feels estranged from his father and is an outcast in the town the family calls home. The story is primarily about the life of Dr. Dam. However, in presenting Babu's struggle to understand his father, the tale echoes larger issues of concern in India, such as poverty, government corruption, religious conflict, and ethnic discrimination. In structuring his novel, Deb chose to use a risky narrative strategy—the first seven chapters present Dr. Dam's life in reverse chronology, beginning in 1986 when he is retired, struggling to get the pension he is owed, and the victim of a stroke. The novel concludes years after the death of his parents with a much older Babu visiting the town where he grew up and still struggling to understand and know his father.

Critical review has been plentiful and often filled with admiration for this debut novel. Amit Chaudhuri, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, praised Deb's mastery of the craft, saying "From the first chapter … to the subsequent chapters … we know we are in the hands of a craftsman who has the gifts of observation, memory, and expression." According to Mary Whipple in a review for Mostly Fiction, "Deb's straightforward and often elegant prose is particularly effective in that it does not direct attention to itself. Deb concentrates on universal values and the father-son search for understanding, with the result that the novel is … accessible to readers from other cultures and … potent in its observations about life."

While most reviews were positive, not all critics found the retrospective technique effective. A contributor for Kirkus Reviews called the narrative "rambling" and a "badly organized account [that] suffers from a tangled plot that often seems more meditation than narrative." In most instances, even reviews critical of the unusual organizational technique had praise for the novel as a whole. "The structure of the narrative sometimes makes it hard to understand the chronology of events," pronounced a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, "but Deb convincingly shows how Babu comes to admire and mourn his father, and movingly dramatizes the immersion of individual lives in the flow of history."

Michael Spinella of Booklist termed the work a "magnificent coming-of-age novel," in which "Deb chronicles an end to India's age of innocence as it struggles to define itself as a distinct entity in the modern global world." Suzanne Ruta, writing for the New York Times Book Review, concluded, "Storytelling of the kind Deb lavishes, for most of this book, on Dr. Dam is rare and precious and uplifting." Deb summarized his intent in writing the book when he told an interviewer for the Hindu, "What I wanted to do is use my memories of the town … as a template for some large questions on identity, belonging, and nationhood."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2003, Michael Spinella, review of The Point of Return, p. 1274; November 15, 2003, Donna Seaman, "Voices of India," review of The Point of Return, p. 574.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2003, review of The Point of Return, p. 154.

Library Journal, May 1, 2003, Faye A. Chadwell, review of The Point of Return, p. 154.

New York Times, March 23, 2003, Suzanne Ruta, "Midnight Minus One," review of The Point of Return, p. 13; March 30, 2003, "And Bear in Mind," review of The Point of Return, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, February 17, 2003, review of The Point of Return, p. 57.

Times Literary Supplement, December 6, 2002, Amit Chaudhuri, review of The Point of Return, p. 8; August 23, 2002, Nick Seddon, review of The Point of Return, p. 20.