Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

Description: 'I loved this beautiful book. It's tender and compassionate, written with exquisite care and verve, and so so SO funny' MARIAN KEYES Professor Chandra is an expert at complex problems. There's just one he can't crack: the secret of happiness In the moments after the bicycle accident, Professor Chandra doesn't see his life flash before his eyes, but his life's work. He's just narrowly missed out on the Nobel Prize (again) and even though he knows he should get straight back to his pie charts, his doctor has other ideas. All this work. All this success. All this stress. It's killing him. He needs to take a break, start enjoying himself. In short, says his doctor (who is from California), Professor Chandra should just follow his bliss. He doesn't know it yet, but Professor Chandra is about to embark on the trip of a lifetime.

Review: "I loved this beautiful beautiful book. It's tender and compassionate, written with exquisite care and verve, and so so SO funny" -- Marian Keyes "Chandra is a delightful creation: peevish, intolerant, intellectually exacting, unwittingly eccentric, nerdy, needy let lovable. The book, like its picaresque hero, is a one-off" -- Patricia Nicol * Sunday Times * "This brilliant and eloquent novel, which puts into words so many unutterable annoyances, is a sort of Zen satire in which tolerance and understanding mingle with hilarious criticism of contemporary mores. It's a wonderful read" -- Wendy Holden * Daily Mail * "Rajeev Balasubramanyam gently pokes fun at the modern fondness for positivity, but tells a disarmingly positive story... The writing is elegant and witty and the comedy is always underpinned with humanity; a life without bliss is no life, and the gradual dawning of Chandra's self-awareness is genuinely uplifting" -- Kate Saunders * The Times * "Balances satire and self-enlightenment... a surprisingly soulful family tale that echoes Jonathan Franzen's Corrections in its witty exploration of three children trying to free themselves from the influence of their parents" -- Ben East * Observer * "Uplifting literature, or up-lit as it's called by publishers, is dominating the bestseller charts... One of the funniest is Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam... Beneath the comedy lie serious concerns. Wellness, capitalism, mollycoddled minds intolerant of political difference: Balasubramanyam's issues are current" -- Francesca Angelini * Sunday Times * "By turns charming and witty, this is an effortless, uplifting read that has many pertinent observations to make about family relationships" -- Simon Humphreys * Mail on Sunday * "His journey provides a genuine look at what happiness is or might be, as well as being properly, heart warningly funny. A joyful take on grasping second chances" -- Alexandra Heminsley * Grazia * "After the brilliant, stressed, cynical economist Professor Chandra has a serious accident, he is told to take a break and 'follow his bliss' to California. Little does he know he'll discover a thing or two about happiness" * Elle * "A gentle ride of a book that tackles all of life's big questions and also manages to be very, very funny" * Red * "A warm and funny account of one man's attempt to be more chill" -- Francesca Carington * Tatler * "Accompanying Chandra as he sets about untangling the knots in his personal life is both uplifting and entertaining. The language of spiritual healing comes naturally to Balasubramanyam, and he deploys it to great effect in this superbly relevant story for our times" -- Shahina Piyarali * Shelf-Awareness * "A book that is as quirky and charming as its title... This is a tender, at times hilarious, look at life which is at once both funny and moving. If you loved The Rosie Project, then this book is definitely for you!" -- Kat O'Connor * SHEmazing! * "Delightful...by turns witty and wise...almost Wodehouse-like" -- Donal O'Donoghue * RTE Guide * "Professor Chandra is as acerbic and unbending a curmudgeon as one could wish to find scowling from the pages of a novel. Brilliant, pompous, and baffled by the world outside his Cambridge study, Chandra is forced on a reluctant quest to America to find himself and his family. Searingly funny, uplifting and wonderful" -- Helen Simonson, author of MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND "One of the funniest novels to be released in some time" * Sunday Times * "Balasubramanyam demonstrates with insight and a dash of humor that it's possible to turn one's life around after everything goes wrong...makes a winning case for how meditation, restraint, self-reflection and owning one's character flaws can bring joy and satisfaction to life" * Publishers Weekly * "Balasubramanyam sets Chandra on a journey through his hardest feelings, working through the anger and emotional ineptitude that too often conceal his infinite love for his family. At first, Chandra's children take even his self-blame for selfishness, but subtle changes in his introspection make for a big outward shift. With humor and emotional agility, Balasubramanyam writes a feel-good story that leaves room for feeling bad" * Booklist * "Recovering fuddy-duddy Chandra is a droll creation, and his journey of self-realization feels like the real thing" * Kirkus * "There's a long tradition of trying to describe the spiritual search and the ineffable mystery without sounding like a pretentious snob or a sappy Pollyanna. Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss manages to pull it off. The book tackles perennially difficult and deep questions with humor and humanity, beautiful writing, and a page-turning storyline. I gave myself over to Professor Chandra's journey as he opens himself to self-examination, family healing, and a more courageous experience of being alive" -- Elizabeth Lesser, author of New York Times bestseller BROKEN OPEN and Cofounder, Omega Institute


Author Biography: Rajeev Balasubramanyam was born in Lancashire and studied at Oxford, Cambridge and Lancaster universities. He is the prize-winning author of In Beautiful Disguises. He has lived in London, Manchester, a remote Suffolk beach, Kathmandu and Hong Kong, where he was a Research Scholar in the Society of Scholars at Hong Kong University. He was a fellow of the Hemera Foundation, for writers with a meditation practice, and has been writer-in-residence at Crestone Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Center of New York City. His journalism and short fiction have appeared in the Washington Post, The Economist, the New Statesman, London Review of Books, Paris Review, McSweeney's and many others. He currently lives and works in Berlin.