Man Who Tried to Remember

A well-known figure in Pune, Achyut Athavale is a retired economist of wide-ranging interests and some social standing. He is often invited to give lectures and speak at public events. One such speech results in a riot taking place in the city, leading a troubled Achyut to move into a home for the elderly located near three small villages in rural India named Norway, Sweden and Denmark. There Achyut suffers a temporary loss of memory and murders another inmate of the home. Events take a turn for the bizarre with the media, the Hindi film industry and some international political figures campaigning to assert Achyut’s innocence. Bringing together the stylistic elements of the early twentieth-century Marathi novel and the modern European Absurd in this superbly crafted exploration of causality and memory, Makarand Sathe creates a scathing and humorous narrative around the happenings of Achyut’s life.