A CONSIDERED LIFE

Upamanyu Chatterjee's new novel-Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life-is about a monk on a metaphysical quest, and is unlike anything he has written before

- Aditya Mani Jha

LORENZO SEARCHES FOR THE MEANING LIFE

by Upamanyu Chatterjee

SPEAKING TIGER

₹699; 304 pages

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s latest novel, Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life, represents a bit of a departure in terms of both form and substance. The 65-year-old writer is known for novels like English, August (1988), The Last Burden (1993), Weight Loss (2006) and, more recently, The Revenge of the Non-Vegetarian (2018) and Villainy (2022). They are acclaimed for their razor-sharp, sarcasm-laden language, their irony and dark humour, and Chatterjee’s wealth of insights about how Indians balance individual and community needs.

His latest novel, however, began life after Chatterjee met his wife’s Italian colleague Fabrizio Senesi, a man who had left home to live in a Benedictine monastery in his early 20s, and then worked in a Benedictine ‘ashram’ in Khulna, Bangladesh. Here was a man who had ‘renounced’ his regular life to pursue spiritual development, lived as a monk for over two decades, and then returned to the ‘regular’ world. Chatterjee based Lorenzo Searches... on Senesi’s experiences, following a chance encounter in the Colombo apartment complex where he lives.