Immigrant, Montana

Immigrant, Montana is story of AK, an Indian academic working in America. It is a love story, or rather the story of what a man can fall in love with: in AK's case, literature, radical politics, and, of course, women. AK's education is both an intellectual and an emotional journey, and we share in his learning and humanity in an unusually sympathetic way.

This is a novel of subtle intensity and luminous intelligence: both a reinvention of what used to be called the 'campus novel' and an exploration of postcolonial identity. It is a tender yet provocative book about exile, desire, passion, and restlessness. It sits in a tradition that started with Flaubert's Sentimental Education and was resurrected by V.S.Naipaul. And it does what fiction should always do: make the world seem new.

Immigrant, Montana is the radical extension of a literary genre that started with Sebald and has recently found voice in the work of Teju Cole and Ben Lerner. A witty cultural satirist and beguiling ironist, Kumar has created a voice that is elliptical, self-deprecating, and brilliantly ambiguous: and the result is one of the most distinctive novels of the decade.