Em and the Big Hoom

A Novel

by Jerry Pinto

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Pub Date Jun 24 2014 | Archive Date Jul 24 2014

PENGUIN GROUP Penguin | Penguin Books

General Fiction (Adult)

Description

The devastatingly original debut novel from a winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.

“Profoundly moving . . . I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this.” —Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace

First published by a small press in India, Jerry Pinto’s debut novel has already taken the literary world by storm. Suffused with compassion, humor, and hard-won wisdom, Em and the Big Hoom is a modern masterpiece, and its American publication is certain to be one of the major literary events of the season.

Meet Imelda and Augustine, or—as our young narrator calls his unusual parents—Em and the Big Hoom. Most of the time, Em smokes endless beedis and sings her way through life. She is the sun around which everyone else orbits. But as enchanting and high-spirited as she can be, when Em’s bipolar disorder seizes her she becomes monstrous, sometimes with calamitous consequences for herself and others. This accomplished debut is graceful and urgent, with a one-of-a-kind voice that will stay with readers long after the last page.

Advance Praise

“Em and the Big Hoom is a beautiful book, a child’s-eye view of madness and sorrow, full of love, pain, and, unaccountably, much wild comedy. One of the very best books to come out of India in a long, long, time.”

–Salman Rushdie, Best of the Booker winner for Midnight’s Children

“Pinto chases the elusive portrait of a mother who simply said of herself that she was mad. This is a rare, brilliant book, one that is wonderfully different from any other I that I have read coming out of India.”

–Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss, Winner of the Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award

“It is utterly persuasive and deeply affecting: stylistically adventurous it is never self-indulgent; although suffused with pain it shows no trace of self-pity. Parts of it are extremely funny, and its pages are filled with endearing and eccentric characters. Em and the Big Hoom is a profoundly moving book: I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this.”

–Amitav Ghosh, bestselling author of The Glass Palace

“Pinto’s narrative is both brutal and beautiful.” – Business Standard Book Review