No Direction Rome

Barua’s reflective debut mostly consists of the novel’s exceedingly cynical narrator, Krantik, an Indian man living in Rome, talking with friends, acquaintances, and strangers about subjects ranging from sex and drugs to the fate of humanity, always with the beautiful and haunting ruins of Rome as a backdrop. Krantik’s fiancée through an arranged marriage has just attempted suicide and returned home to India for psychological treatment, and Krantik is now pursuing a fleeting relationship with a complicated Italian woman whom he meets after asking her for directions to a tourist site to which he already knows the way, a recurring behavior that serves as a metaphor for his lack of direction in life. Struggling to find meaning in his work and personal relationships, Krantik rails in interior monologue against everything from society’s fetishistic relationship with popular culture to his generation’s propensity for communicating primarily via social media, expressing a particular disdain for the use of Instagram filters. But while the novel is occasionally sharp and even insightful in its cultural critique, its caustic, bitter voice grates, and the plot seems incidental to the point of simply providing the scaffolding for a rant about the dispassion and detachment of an entire generation. (Nov.)