Serious men - Manu Joseph

Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize and shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

Ayyan Mani is a man born to greater things, which wouldn't surprise his neighbours in the vast tenement building in which he lives, where to be sober and employed practically makes a man a legend.

He works as an assistant at the Institute of Theory and Research, where he studies with amusement and envy the public battles and private love affairs of the squabbling scientists. But when an opportunity for betterment presents itself in the form of his 'gifted' ten-year-old son Adi, father and son embark on an outrageous ruse that will have far-reaching consequences.

Manu Joseph's archly comic debut is a tale of a man's attempt to elevate himself and his family above the banality of ordinary existence.