Author | Upamanyu Chatterjee |
---|---|
Country | India |
Language | English |
Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | 2000 |
Pages | 437 pp |
ISBN | 0-670-87934-7 |
OCLC | 45845242 |
823/.914 21 | |
LC Class | PR9499.3.C4665 M36 2000 |
Preceded by | English, August |
The Mammaries of the Welfare State is an English-language Indian novel, the sequel to Upamanyu Chatterjee's debut novel, English, August, also told from the perspective of the fictional character Agastya Sen. [1] It won the Sahitya Akademi Award (English) in 2004. [2] The novel tells the story of political bureaucracy in the fictional state of Madna when an epidemic breaks out. [3] The title derives from a line of dialog in the novel, where a civil servant states "In my eight years of service, I haven't come across a single case in which everybody concerned didn't try to milk dry the boobs of the Welfare State". [3]
Anand Vardhan states that the novel anticipated India's initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in its portrayal of a pandemic where civil servants are preoccupied more with "procedure and spin". [3] Anjana Sharma, writing for The Hindu, says that it "dares to voice a moral outrage that very rarely finds its way into fiction". [4] Various reviews praise the humour of the novel as a "hilarious satire", [5] "funny" [6] and "a book of laughter and disgust". [1]
It received some criticism for its structure, focus and length. Vardhan criticizes the novel's "scattered plot and meandering narratives", [3] while Sharma concurs that it is "a bit repetitive". [4] The Modern Novel states that it "does drag out somewhat" and "you just want him to get on with the story. Which he doesn’t." [6]