Home > Books > Ecstasy


 
Non Fiction
Fiction
 
 
 


Ecstasy: A Novel (Delhi: Viking-Penguin, 2001)

U.S. edition, (New York: Overlook Press, 2002)

Hindi translation Anandvarsha, (Delhi: Rajkamal, 2002)

German translation Der Mystiker oder die Kunst der Ekstase(Munich: Beck Verlag, 2001)

French translation Au Nom de l’Extase (Paris: du Seuil,2005)

Italian translation Estasi (Milan: Neri Pozza, 2004)

Russian translation (Moscow: Sophia, in Press)

Serbian translation Ekstaza (Belgrade: Stylos,2003)

From Reviews

This novel dramatizes, as only good fiction can, that even in reading about transgendered breasts and transcendent visions we are, finally, reading about aspects of ourselves.
Washington Post Book World

As in The Ascetic of Desire, Kakar’s fascinating novel that doubled as an essay on sex, the author’s greatest strength lies in his ability to portray the emotional conflicts resulting from physical experiences…lusciously imagined….top-of-the-line fiction …
Publisher’s Weekly

With sensitivity and intelligence, Kakar’s “Ecstasy” offers a poetic view of the place where flesh and spirit meet.
The Seattle Times

Arouses every reaction of the human fibre, from the microcosm of physical tingle to the hypnosis of a spiritual trance…A prose that cultivates visual graphics rather than auditory imagination…an electric sensuality prevails over all else.
Asian Age

What holds the narrative together is Kakar’s sympathetic descriptions of religious life—the set piece in a temple that specializes in exorcism is a classic—and his ironic descriptions of middle-class family life…His prose is clear and evocative…Kakar’s descriptions are as good as any in Indian English fiction.
The Hindu

Ecstasy works at many levels…a story that has many secrets and many interpretations, which are exciting, revealing and finally totally human, filled with the message of human longing for the divine, for the divine in the human.
Gentleman

Kakar excels in turning his cultural and spiritual heritage into a narrative of identity…a humanising tribute to religion—without being religious.
India Today

A mesmeric and readable book about a mysticism which tantalises as it recedes in a haze and dust of contemporary revivalism.
Deccan Chronicle

Eminently readable…deserves the attention of all serious-minded people.
Khushwant Singh, in The Telegraph