Miss New India

De: Bharati Mukherjee

Narrado por: Farah Bala

Anjali Bose is Miss New India. Born into a traditional lower-middle-class family and living in a backwater town with an arranged marriage on the horizon, Anjali's prospects don't look great. But her ambition and fluency in language do not go unnoticed by her expat teacher, Peter Champion. And champion her he does, both to other powerful people who can help her along the way and to Anjali herself, stirring in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny.

So she sets off to Bangalore, India's fastest-growing major metropolis, and quickly falls in with an audacious and ambitious crowd of young people who have learned how to sound American by watching shows like Seinfeld in order to get jobs as call-center service agents, where they are quickly able to out-earn their parents. And it is in this high-tech city where Anjali, suddenly free from the traditional confines of class, caste, gender, and mores, able to confront her past and reinvent herself. Of course, the seductive pull of modernity does not come without a dark side....

©2011 Bharati Mukherjee (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Well read and informative

Any additional comments?

This is a great audio book. The narrator is excellent and the story offers a window into another culture.

Almost couldn't listen to it

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The story line is good, but Ms Bala's narration is slow, stilted, and when she does Anji's voice (and other female voices), she somehow broadens her mouth and talks in the back of her throat in the worst caricature of a

A mixed bag for me

My take on the book--I liked listening about modern day India. I liked all the characters EXCEPT the main character! I know that not all main characters are commanding, take-charge types, but she made me nuts with her inability to make some decent choices independently! I loved the people around her who helped, though. The story itself was decent, basically one about a sheltered small town girl moving to the big city and how confusing it can be. It was worth a listen, but I think I bought it on sale, so I don't feel like a credit was wasted.

Well done and very enjoyable

If you want to know about a side of modern India that you do not know about, this book will open you eyes. You are imersed into the story and the setting and you feel as if you are really there.

An enjoyable listen

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. In fact, until I looked it up on the internet, I had assumed it wasn't fiction! (Although, toward the end it was clear it was fiction. It got rather silly.)

The story line itself was decent, but nothing spectacular. I enjoyed more the backdrop of India and modern Indian culture, as well as the historical perspective from both the British and Indian side thanks to the old British lady the main character lives with for a while.

Bala does a pretty good job with the narration. The accents she uses lend some authenticity to my rather naive ears. Maybe somebody who knows the actual fine points of regional Indian accents could critique them, but they were good enough for me. There were some awkward points in the narration, but those seemed to mirror to the "English Language Learner" status of the main character.