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A charming debut novelManu Joseph is deputy editor and Mumbai bureau chief for OPEN magazine. Previously, he was National Features Editor of the largest newspaper in India, The Times of India , writer-at-large for Wired 's website, wired.com, and has written for the Independent . In 2007 he became a Chevening Scholar, an annual British Government award for twelve journalists who will shape opinions in the future. This is his first novel.A sparkling, comic novel about modern India Zusammenfassung Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize and shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Ayyan Mani works in the Institute of Theory and Research as a lowly personal assistant to a brilliant, insufferable astronomer, Arvind Acharya, who is obsessed with his theory about microscopic aliens falling to earth. Stranded in an ordinary life, Ayyan knows he may not be able to escape his realities. To entertain himself, and to cheer up his weary wife, he weaves an outrageous fiction around his ten-year-old son, setting in motion a chain of extraordinary events he is unable to stop. Meanwhile, a war is brewing between rival scientists at the Institute and a beautiful astrobiologist complicates matters further. An astute observer, Ayyan follows these events closely, inventing new ways to further his own cause. Serious Men is a brilliantly funny tale of science, love and hope. Manu Joseph's assured storytelling makes this a debut to treasure.
