The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe
A novel
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4.3 • 14 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The basis for the major motion picture The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir
A charmingly exuberant comic debut, The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe is the globetrotting story of a trickster from rural India and his adventure of a lifetime.
When the fakir—a professional con artist—arrives in Paris, he has just one goal: to get to Ikea. Armed with only a counterfeit hundred-euro note in the pocket of his silk trousers, he is confident that he has all he needs to thrive. But his plan goes horribly awry when he hides inside a wardrobe at the iconic Swedish retailer—the first in a series of accidents that will send him on a whirlwind tour across Europe.
Pursued across the continent by a swindled taxi driver dead set on revenge, our fakir soon finds unlikely friends—from movie stars to illegal immigrants—in even unlikelier places. And, much to his own surprise, his heart begins to open to those around him as he comes to understand the universal desire to seek a better life in an often dangerous world.
Channeling the manic energy of the Marx Brothers and the biting social commentary of Candide,Romain Puértolas has crafted an unforgettable comic romp around Europe that is propelled by laughter, love, and, ultimately, redemption. (Meatballs not included but highly recommended.)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French author Pu rtolas's first novel to be translated stateside is a farcical tale with a dark underbelly. Indian fakir Ajatashatru Oghash Rathod gets into trouble when he travels to France to buy a new bed of nails (named hertsy rb k, in a pun) at a Parisian Ikea. Rathod decides to spend the night at the furniture store, trying out beds like Goldilocks and dining on leftover Swedish food. His idyll is soon interrupted by a group of employees; seeking refuge in a wardrobe, Rathod is bubble-wrapped and shipped out, entering not Narnia but a claustrophobic world of illegal immigrants. Pu rtolas delights in wordplay and gets plenty of mileage out of (mis-)pronunciations of the fakir's name ("A-jar-of-rat-stew-oh-gosh!" morphs into "A-jackal-that-ate-you"), as well as the ridiculous lexicon of Ikea furniture. This wordplay runs alongside the stark reality of the refugees, people whose "only mistake was to have been born on the wrong side of the Mediterranean." Grumpy border agents shunt them from one place to another, seeing only problems, not humanity, crammed into the world's tiniest spaces. A manic yet incisive satire.
