A Bayard From Bengal Being some account of the Magnificent and Spanking Career of Chunder Bindabun Bhosh, Esq., B.A., Cambridge by F. AnsteyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a tricky one. It's a British author pretending to be an Indian author, and comically getting English idioms wrong as he tells a story of an Indian man (not the supposed author) in England, having unlikely adventures that sometimes assume that England is like India. The illustrations are also supposedly by an Indian illustrator, though actually by an English one, and are done in a Mughal-influenced style, showing the British scenes as a not-very-knowledgeable Indian person might imagine them.
It wouldn't fly today, in other words; there would be a firestorm on Twitter, and the author would have to disappear and resurface several years later, possibly under a pseudonym. The tricky part is that the main body of the text is actually quite amusing at times, though that's brought down badly by the supposed translations of parables and the pseudo-author's commentary on the illustrations, the first of which is often not funny at all, and the second of which is heavy-handed and obvious.
On the whole, not recommended.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment