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Romantics by pankaj mishra talks about the coming of age of samar.Samar a graduate student moves to benares.There he meets two foreigners women, west and catherine.The novel slowly develops characterizing these three and one of samar's college friend rajesh. All these characters including samar are romantics who have a longing. Samar who later moves on to pondicherry and dharmashala comes back to give after 7 years to give us an update on what happened to all these romantics.

This book has a few good things like the realistic way in which mishra deals with the characters and backdrop.The characters are not sensationalized and the city of benares is not made exotic to appeal to the western audience. Rather than quoting many of the western authors that the character samar reads, pankaj quotes faiz ahmed faiz and Iqbal.He shows the distance between his view of benares and the westerners view of mystical and spiritual benares.

He has borrowed naipauls words here and there, when quoting his fathers retirement into pondicherry ashram he say it as the 'hindu retreat', a naipaul language.Other than that, his simple language, uninteresting characters and detailed description of day to day things makes it plain and boring.Iam guilty of being a reader who needs some plot,intresting character/backdrop or some central theme to find the book intresting.A romantic loosers coming of age is not my favourite theme, so I found the book dull, boring, simplistic and painfully descriptive at times.

If you want a book that doesn't confirm to the usual norms of plot based stories and are looking for minimalism,style and simplicity maybe u can try this one.

Pankaj mishra