Baumgartners Bombay
by by Anita Desai
Category: Indic fiction (English)

A daring, colourful novel almost impossible to absorb in one reading. TheNew York Times Book ReviewHugo Baumgartner is a firanghi wherever he goes - too dark for Hitler'sGermany, too fair for India. Escaping the Nazi regime but losing his parents toit, the wandering Jew builds a life in India only to be interrupted by war, andthen partition - and finally finds a home in multitudinous Bombay.We meet him as a kindly, rather hapless old man who spends his days makingthe rounds of local teashops to scavenge for his many cats. Then, one day atthe Café du Paris, one of his regular haunts, he encounters a surly youngGerman of the new order - a drug-crazed hippie who will change his lifeforever. Set in Berlin, Venice, Calcutta - and of course Bombay -Baumgartner's Bombay is the story of the twentieth century and a memorableportrait of Baumgartner, survivor, victim, everyman.