Cobalt Blue
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Now a film from Netflix India, this memorable novel confronts issues of sexuality in a changing society through a love triangle between a brother, sister, and their family’s lodger Recently adapted into a stunning Netflix film, Cobalt Blue is a tale of rapturous love and fierce heartbreak told with tenderness and unsparing clarity. Brother and sister Tanay and Anuja both fall in love with the same man, an artist lodging in their family home in Pune, in western India. He seems like the perfect tenant, ready with the rent and happy to listen to their mother’s musings on the imminent collapse of Indian culture. But he’s also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history, and no plans for the future. When he runs away with Anuja, he overturns the family’s lives.
Translated from the Marathi by acclaimed novelist and critic Jerry Pinto, Sachin Kundalkar’s elegantly wrought and exquisitely spare novel explores the disruption of a traditional family by a free-spirited stranger in order to examine a generation in transition. Intimate, moving, sensual, and wry in its portrait of young love, Cobalt Blue is a frank and lyrical exploration of gay life in India that recalls the work of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst—of people living in emotional isolation, attempting to find long-term intimacy in relationships that until recently were barely conceivable to them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In modern-day India, the Joshi family is split along generational lines: parents Aai and Baba value traditions and the home, while two of their children, Tanay and Anuja, seek more from their lives than marriage. Into this volatile mix comes a mysterious, alluring tenant who takes over the upstairs room. Both Tanay and Anuja fall in love with the man, who remains nameless throughout the novel. A soft-spoken artist, he has forsaken his last name and refuses to elaborate on his troubled past. The story is narrated first by Tanay and then by his sister, Anuja, as they recount the events leading up to Anuja's running away with the man and her eventual return. In these combative siblings, Kundalkar has created two powerful, singular voices. Tanay is intimate and sensual, and his narrative lingers over precise moments, turning them over incessantly as he searches for meaning. Anuja's introspection reflects her more focused personality and reveals her inner nature: rebellious, impulsive, and self-centered. As she gets over her heartache, Anuja wonders why her brother is not happier to see her return. Both siblings, in their own ways, try to reconcile the man they loved with his sudden desertion, and their own willingness to unquestioningly follow him. In his debut novel, Kundalkar combines two distinct and complementary voices to deliver a complex and intricate story about love, family, and making one's own path.
