The Copper Sky

Description

ABOUT THE BOOK
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London. 1950s. Naïve Amar Das arrives to study at the LSE. The release from the war-torn skies and the daily threat of death had unleashed a tide of unprecedented pleasure-seeking which swept over hidebound English society. Gone was the Victorian prudery the British rulers had exported to middle-class India, Amar realises, as he stumbles over coupled bodies in his walk through Hyde Park. He has to struggle with the new mores, the pervading permissiveness. At the same time he thrills to the intellectual freedom which he senses all around, the challenge of ideas, the encouragement to question orthodoxy. Casting a dark shadow over all this, though, are his bitter memories of British rule and anguish at having been treated as second-class citizen in his own country. His restless anger at the colonisers spills over from time to time. Along the way, a lonely wife offers him her ambiguous friendship, an attractive single mother her love, a manipulative student her bed and an enigmatic girl his romantic focus. How does the unworldly youngster deal with the challenges that adulthood and autonomy confront him with?

A universal issue that transcends both time and space.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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Retiring from a multinational and a subsequent HR consultancy, Abhijit Gupta submitted to a lifelong desire to write, creating a novel influenced by the three eventful years he spent getting his second degree at the London School of Economics, having obtained his first degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi. In those years he found a new intellectual and emotional liberation and grew to love London for it. While at the LSE, he also captained the Fencing Team. A passion for travel has taken him and his wife all over the world. Unable to follow tourist itineraries, his idea of bliss is to sit with a glass of wine in a tree-shaded square in Barcelona and watch the world go by. Or wander through his beloved forests and hills in India. Two of his travel articles were published in the Economic Times and the Business Line respectively. He loves to paint, write and read, often while listening to music. That is, when the boisterous grandchildren and children are not visiting. Sometimes, he is allowed to indulge his other passion – cricket.