Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors
UK Publisher
Serpent's Tail
Date Published
July 7th, 2022
Translations
French (Actes Sudes)
German (Suhrkamp)
Italian (Guanda)
Swedish (Natur & Kultur)
It is a day of triumph for Appa and Amma, who have driven home a shiny new Honda Civic to show off to their neighbours in Blue Hills housing colony. But their eldest son Sreenath is behaving strangely, and his younger brother soon finds out why: a clip of Sreenath and his girlfriend Anita has been posted to a porn site, and is gaining traction.
When the news breaks, their parents’ anxiously acquired status is shattered, and the war between them becomes a viral story, emblematic of a wider generational fight. Our narrator must become a reluctant middleman, seduced by the freedoms his older brother and his friends point to, while desperate to restore the family unity.
Full of bittersweet comedy, and insight into contemporary Indian society and an online generation, this is a story about now with the feel of a classic.
Reviews
A sparkling debut, full of tenderness and mischief. It’s as if Roth and Narayan had a baby.
- Aatish Taseer, author of The Way Things Were
Told with dry and restrained humour ... Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors stands out not for what it tackles ... but for its graceful sidestepping of the usual narrative routes, without any loss of impact or verisimilitude. Jayan's book is the calling card of a novelist of promise and surprising maturity.
a breezy tale of intergenerational conflict, with a side order of class consciousness
Smart, utterly original, and beautifully rendered -- in the age of the internet, still stories of family remain ageless. Jayan sets us in a moment when the past and present are in precarious balance and leaves us to settle for ourselves what has been broken and what will never be. Loved it.
- Karen Joy Fowler, Booker-shortlisted author of International bestseller We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
It's impossible not to love this book. You'll laugh and laugh until you find yourself devastated by the last thirty or so pages, and you’ll still be laughing. Oh, did I also mention unputdownable?
- Neel Mukherjee, Booker-shortlisted author of The Lives of Others
Truly infectious... a fresh take on the family drama, the internet novel and the comedy of manners, slicing through inherited ideas around shame, honour, and reputation.
One of the wittiest, cleverest, most perceptive books I've read about India in years.
- Rahul Raina, author of How To Kidnap The Rich
Laugh-out-loud funny – a beguiling debut by a writer of great charm
- Paul Murray, author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Skippy Dies
Humorous, insightful and enormously touching . . . an exquisite debut
- Clare Allan, author of The Orange Prize-shortlisted Poppy Shakespeare