Xi'an's Og

I first got attracted by this book thanks to its beautiful cover (in a Seattle bookstore last year)! The book is an aggregate of three stories, loosely related around the themes of altruism and disastrous good intentions. I did not like the first story, about the disintegration of a gay couple by ways of (OCD) psychiatric issues as well as an increasing radicalism towards Ayush’s societal choices, with some shocking episodes as when he shows illegal filming from pig abattoirs to their young children. I saw some worth in the second story, when a classic academic gets obsessed with the migration of a Sudanese child-soldier to the point of obsession, removing herself from her job and civic duties, as in not reporting a possible hit & run, and eventually gifting a kidney to the refugee’s brother. As a dubious reparation for her grand-parents’ involvement in the British Raj colonialism. I mostly enjoyed the third one, where Sabita, a rural Bengali or Bangladeshi woman, receives a cow from experimental economists (in the spirit of Esther Duflo’s school), a stupendous gift that is slowly unraveling her family and her precarious finances. However, my overall impression is one of an overly ideological posture, tending to caricatures (esp. of academics) and compartmentalisation of individuals, to the detriment of the book per se and to the depth of its characters. The last story is further strongly condescending towards the main character who proves unable to manage the cow (and her family), again forcing the trait for the sake of the political argument. The Guardian is more appreciative of the book, however.