"The world constantly renews itself, and when you look at it that way, regret and nostalgia seem equally futile. The past does live on, in people as well as cities. I have only to look back on that winter in Benares to realize how hard it is to let go of it."

In 1998, an unknown writer published his first article in The New York Review of Books. The piece was a hit and caught the eye of publishers around the world. The writer, Pankaj Mishra, sold the rights to his first novel in over ten countries. Just published, Mishra's THE ROMANTICS is an elegant and erotic tale of the constant pull of the worlds of both the West and the East.

His prose is spare and elegiac, and his characters are as vibrant and electric as the lands they inhabit. THE ROMANTICS concerns a Brahman student's first great desire --- a French woman with whom he spends time at what Mishra calls "the end of the known world." Heady and intimate, the affair is, however, short-lived. Upon his return to his books and an elderly British neighbor, Samar ponders the mysterious rifts between his Eastern upbringing (arranged marriages is a hot topic) and his fascination with the West (where love is more illicit and excitingly experienced). Later on, he returns to his homeland in Benares and is haunted by the images that come rushing back to him. Revisiting his old haunts is a difficult yet "calming" time for the narrator.

With a good luck story like that of Mishra's discovery, one would not expect a book like THE ROMANTICS to be as profound as it is. His efficient use of language, his perfect capturing of the first experiences of love, his infatuations with specific parts of the Western culture, as well as the exotic backdrops of India make THE ROMANTICS a great read. Mishra has rendered love in all its pain and wonder completely and complexly. THE ROMANTICS is romantic but smart and will be sure to win this new novelist many, many fans.