Tin Fish

So there we were, Fish, Porridge, PT Shoe and I, Brandy. We were brothers without barriers, friends until death.

In an elite boarding school in Rajasthan, fifteen-year-old Barun Ray, aka Brandy, lover of canned fish and beefsteak, hater of Kipling, worshipper of Michael Caine and Mick Jagger, meets his soulmates—Fish, ‘king’ swimmer with a domineering, Muslim-hating father; PT Shoe, a princeling who wants to run away to America and marry a gora chick; and Porridge, a cereal-loving jester caught between warring churches at home.

Together, the four boys set about characteristically irreverent, sometimes hilarious rebellions against their regimented fishbowl existence at a brown-sahib institution in a turbulent, changing India. But growing up isn’t always a breeze, and even as they eat toothpaste for dessert and make ambitious plans to write their own musical, Get Lost on the Ganga and All That, they struggle to make sense of incomprehensible adults, Indira Gandhi, the Emergency, urine therapy, girls, and try, above all, to preserve innocence in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Wry, witty and utterly unsentimental, Tin Fish is an exhilarating ride through the wonder years of coming of age.

‘‘ ‘This fine coming-of-age novel is set in the mid-1970s … This is slice of life at its most engaging: the narrative moves unselfconsciously from one episode to the next, without stopping to get preachy along the way … Highly recommended if you’re from that generation, but even more so if you don’t know a world without cellphones and cable TV’ — Business Standard‘Chakravarti’s India is the real India’ — India Today‘It took me three nights to read this book. That’s not because I can’t wade through 236 pages in a single night but because I wanted to delay the gratification and spread it out … Chakravarti has captured a slice of life. And in a way that is not only evocative, reminiscing, sentimental in a black humour kind of way, but literary, insightful, sensitive in a very touchable manner’ — Indian Express‘I think it'''s excellent. It’s the first book I’ve read since English August that captures accurately a certain kind of Indian’s adolescent experience of India. The British do it quite well, books like Lucky Jim come to mind, but for some reason [Indian writers] haven’t managed to write interestingly about the public school experience’ —David Davidar, author of The House of Blue Mangoes and Publisher, Penguin Canada‘Tin Fish brings to life the magic of living … Sudeep Chakravarti does not try to make the book just another boarding school romp where every problem is solved over a midnight feast. That, and his skill at teen-speak, make the book a truly “cat” read.’ — The Week‘Tin Fish is funny and it is sad. It makes you giggle with its boyish, and sometimes wry, humour. It takes you through the lows with pretty much the same intensity. Feelings run deep here, even as there is a conscious effort to camouflage emotions—a typical boy-doing-the-big-man act … When you reach the end, the book disappoints, but only because you wish it hadn’t finished yet. There is so much more to know about Brandy and his chums. You are left wondering if life treated them kind and if they lived out their dreams and friendship. Sudeep rewinds your childhood and makes you relive its uninterrupted joys and its turbulence. His manner is lucid and he is a natural storyteller’ — Tribune‘A light and entertaining read the story of which will stay with you a long, long time; —Hindu