The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

An epic story of a boy’s search for identity in a world which seems to have no place for him. At the turn of the century in a remote corner of India, an English civil servant and a reluctant Hindu bride cross paths during a cataclysmic rainstorm. Nine months later a boy is born. Pran Nath’s startling whiteness is regarded as a sign of nobility till his true parentage is revealed. Ejected from his father’s house, he begins a haphazard journey through the bizarre dark side of the British Empire. As he travels across the world, from Bombay to London, from a moldering Norfolk public school to Oxford and Paris, everyone sees him with a different eye. The Impressionist is a comic saga about history, identity and home. It is the epochal debut of an exceptional writer.