The Indian author G. V. Desani may be a footnote in the annals of
world literature, but what a footnote! He was the author of All About H. Hatterr, one of the most
original, rambunctious, incandescent, and just plain bizarre novels ever
written, a delirious and startling debut–but his debut was his end, for he never
again produced a novel. Salman Rushdie said of him,
"If Narayan is India's [Samuel] Richardson, then Desani is his Shandean
other. Hatterr's dazzling, puzzling,
leaping prose is the first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English
language. His central figure, 'fifty-fifty of the species,' the half-breed as
unabashed anti-hero, leaps and capers behind many of the texts in this book."
"Despite only producing one actual novel, however," [writes The Argumentative Indian], "Desani knew he
had written a classic in All About H.
Hatterr. Shoma Chaudhury reports that, though "chronically skint"
[broke], teaching at the School of Oriental & African Studies in London
while living out of a dismal, one-room basement flat in Chelsea (which had a
loo on the distant end of a cold courtyard), Desani once came to his friend
Khushwant Singh, who was the Press attaché in the Indian High Commission at the
time, and asked him: 'Can you recommend me for the Nobel Prize?'
"Khushwant was dumbstruck: 'But you've only written one book!'
"'So?' countered Desani . . . 'Eliot's written very little also!'
"'Only Nobel winners can recommend others,' Khushwant protested
weakly (taken aback by Desani's 'total lack of modesty').
“'No, even the government can,' insisted Desani steadfastly.
"Worn down by his
persistence, and undone by his ingenuous self-belief, Khushwant meekly signed
the forms. Nothing came of it, of course. The Nobel committee in Sweden checked
things with Dr Radhakrishnan, who was then the ambassador there, and also a
nominee for the Nobel. He was not a bit amused and ticked Khushwant off
roundly. Desani continued to live with his inconvenient loo across the courtyard..."
He returned to India. After years of studying
Buddhism, Hinduism, and the occult, Desani emigrated
to the U.S. and ultimately became a professor at the University of Texas in
Austin, where he died in 2000. Five years after his masterpiece, he published one other book, Hali and Collected Stories. As for Hatterr, it's now back in print after a hiatus of many years.
