Paul Theroux is back, right on schedule, with a new book of fiction, this time a collection of three novellas about Westerners in India called The Elephanta Suite. Pico Iyer gives it a glowing review in Time, calling it “a set of brilliantly evocative and propulsive novellas.”

He continues:

Theroux’s strength as a writer and a traveler has always come from his readiness to say and do what few of us would admit to, and it’s a safe bet that these gleefully impenitent stories will not be promoted by the American Chamber of Commerce or the Indian Ministry of Tourism.

The Wall Street Journal bluntly notes: “This is a book about sex and India—or, better put, sex in India.” But it also adds that “The Elephanta Suite” is “about desire and salvation,” and is “full of the lovely, lively writing we have come to expect of him.”

Meanwhile, the Indian magazine Tehelka is less enthusiastic. “Theroux likes to say that India transforms his Americans but what his stories describe is more like entrapment.” The review does call him a “master craftsman,” but also adds that, “in the end, the robust, lingering taste in our mouth feels half real and half unreal.”

A more substantial critique of Theroux’s portrayal of India comes from The Times in the UK, which calls The Elephanta Suite a “highly readable but unattractive book.” It notes:

The suggestion seems to be either that Indian novelists oversell their country and culture, or that the world they describe is somehow hidden from foreigners. This is, of course, nonsense. While it might be argued that Theroux is merely representing the views of his western characters, there is also a sense that his unrelentingly grim version of India is being offered as some sort of corrective to the world described in such books as Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy—particularly since the same objection to Indian novels is made twice. Rather than confound their initial impressions, the experiences the characters undergo merely reinforce them.

Others see more good than bad in Theroux’s latest. Writing in the Washington Post, Michael Dirda calls Theroux “the Somerset Maugham of our time,” and says his new novellas are “beautifully paced, by turns moving, sexy and disturbing.” And in the Los Angeles Times, Adam Langer tells an amusing anecdote about an encounter with Theroux, but also says that “The Elephanta Suite” has “a tad more generosity of spirit than is often on display in Theroux’s writing.” Yet it could be Iyer who best grasps the real point Theroux is trying to make.

“For many wanderers,” Iyer writes, “travel is about transport, and a journey through a world of wonders; for Paul Theroux, as for his model in these stories, Paul Bowles, travel can often be about dissolution, a slow and irresistible unraveling.”

Related on World Hum:
* Sex, Drugs and Fish Salad
* No. 3: “The Great Railway Bazaar” by Paul Theroux
* Iyer and Theroux: Two Very Different Perspectives on the Op-Ed Pages