[In the following review, Patterson applauds Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, calling it both an "impressive debut" and an "amazingly assured debut."]

Sampath Chawla, the young man at the heart of Kieran Desai's impressive debut, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, wins the prize for the most eccentric form of protest. It has taken his father a year to find his disappointing son a job at the back desk in the Shakhot post office. 'If it wasn't for me,' he remarks bitterly, 'Sampath would be silting in a special museum for people who are a cross between potatoes and human beings.' At the boss's daughter's wedding, Sampath reveals a self-destructive streak worthy of George Michael. Decked in rich brocades and 'chandelierstyle drops in his nose', which he has discovered while snooping behind the scenes, he finds himself performing a spontaneous striptease and, not surprisingly, getting fired. The next day, following a meaningful encounter with an exploding guava, Sampath takes the bus to a local guava orchard, climbs a tree and decides to stay.

Frantic with worry, the family consults the homeopath, the Ayurevedic doctor, the naturopath and the holy man, all to no avail. Meanwhile, Sampath is becoming a bit of a guru himself. Divulging snippets of information gleaned from letters steamed open at the post office, he stuns the growing crowds with his psychic powers, simple proverbs and poetic parables. Mr Chawla is quick to spot and milk the entrepreneurial opportunities while his mad wife, Kulfi, labours over more and more elaborate meals for her son. But Sampath's new-found idyll is soon under threat from an alcohol-crazed band of monkeys.

If this all sounds irritatingly whimsical and surreal, be assured that in Desai's hugely confident hands it is instead charming and deliciously funny. It is very much a novel rooted in Indian culture, but the satirical strands—about entrepreneurialism and the credulous creation of gurus—are, of course, more widely relevant, Kieran Desai is only 26, but her amazingly assured debut is a significant contribution to Indian fiction in English. It conies as little surprise to hear that she is the daughter of the more famous Anita.