Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas

Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is a very prolific writer, having published dozens of works, some fiction and others travelogues. The Elephanta Suite is his latest work of fiction. It is actually three novellas set in India, and tied together by a hotel suite occupied by characters in each story. The suite is in the Taj Palace Hotel, in Mumbai, India, overlooking the India Gate.

Whether you have been to India or not, I think you will find these stories intriguing and enjoyable. The main characters in each of the three are quite different from one another. Because of this the reader gets a unique and well-balanced view of how Westerners of different ages and backgrounds relate to and experience the multi-leveled culture of India.

The first story involves a middle-aged wealthy couple who end up venturing a little too deeply into the seamier sexy underbelly of India. The second story, my favorite, is a very remarkable vignette of an uptight Boston lawyer who discovers his own inner nature for the first time in encounters with a very spiritual Jain businessman on the one hand, and some Indian lower class prostitutes on the other. It is an amazing story and the author does an incredible job of weaving the disparate parts of the experiences together. Finally, the third novella features a young girl recently graduated from Brown and her encounters with both spirituality and Indian men.

All in all the stories are both remarkable and very entertaining. They are also very revealing of the conflicts of Western and Indian culture and of the old and the new in India and how they all interact in this modern day and age. I thoroughly enjoyed these stores and highly recommend this book.

Review by Len Oppenheim

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