The Last Jet-Engine Laugh

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [x], 384. Laminated pictorial boards, in an illustrated, glassine dustjacket, as issued. Photographic endpapers, map frontispiece, b/w line drawings.

Light tanning to textblock edges, else Fine.

Author's debut novel published simultaneously with the Indian edition. The Last Jet-Engine Laugh spans a century in the life of one Indian family, from the demise of Gandhi's non-violent vision of the 1930s to the belligerence and posturing of an Indian superstate of the near future. Paresh, the drifting principal narrator, reflects upon both his pacifist parents and his thoroughly modern daughter, a Squadron Leader caught up in a future war with a Pak-Saudi alliance. "Exhilarating... Joshi's narrative jump-cuts with a surreal invention reminiscent of the work of Vonnegut." –The Times