Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

I loved this beautiful beautiful book. It’s tender and compassionate, written with exquisite care and verve, and so so SO funny – Marian KeyesChandra is a delightful creation: peevish, intolerant, intellectually exacting, unwittingly eccentric, nerdy, needy let lovable. The book, like its picaresque hero, is a one-off – Patricia Nicol * Sunday Times *This brilliant and eloquent novel, which puts into words so many unutterable annoyances, is a sort of Zen satire in which tolerance and understanding mingle with hilarious criticism of contemporary mores. It’s a wonderful read – Wendy Holden * Daily Mail *Rajeev Balasubramanyam gently pokes fun at the modern fondness for positivity, but tells a disarmingly positive story… The writing is elegant and witty and the comedy is always underpinned with humanity; a life without bliss is no life, and the gradual dawning of Chandra’s self-awareness is genuinely uplifting – Kate Saunders * The Times *Balances satire and self-enlightenment… a surprisingly soulful family tale that echoes Jonathan Franzen’s Corrections in its witty exploration of three children trying to free themselves from the influence of their parents – Ben East * Observer *Uplifting literature, or up-lit as it’s called by publishers, is dominating the bestseller charts… One of the funniest is Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam… Beneath the comedy lie serious concerns. Wellness, capitalism, mollycoddled minds intolerant of political difference: Balasubramanyam’s issues are current – Francesca Angelini * Sunday Times *By turns charming and witty, this is an effortless, uplifting read that has many pertinent observations to make about family relationships – Simon Humphreys * Mail on Sunday *His journey provides a genuine look at what happiness is or might be, as well as being properly, heart warningly funny. A joyful take on grasping second chances – Alexandra Heminsley * Grazia *After the brilliant, stressed, cynical economist Professor Chandra has a serious accident, he is told to take a break and ‘follow his bliss’ to California. Little does he know he’ll discover a thing or two about happiness * Elle *A gentle ride of a book that tackles all of life’s big questions and also manages to be very, very funny * Red *

Rajeev Balasubramanyam was born in Lancashire and studied at Oxford, Cambridge and Lancaster universities. He is the prize-winning author of In Beautiful Disguises. He has lived in London, Manchester, a remote Suffolk beach, Kathmandu and Hong Kong, where he was a Research Scholar in the Society of Scholars at Hong Kong University. He was a fellow of the Hemera Foundation, for writers with a meditation practice, and has been writer-in-residence at Crestone Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Center of New York City. His journalism and short fiction have appeared in the Washington Post, The Economist, the New Statesman, London Review of Books, Paris Review, McSweeney’s and many others. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.