Love in a Dead Language

Siegel's dizzying display of erudition is a playful postmodernist novel masquerading as a translation of and commentary on the great Hindu erotic text, the Kama Sutra. In real life, Siegel is a professor of Indian religions at the University of Hawaii, and the author of five books on Indian culture. He actually appears in his own novel, as the professor that he is, writing to Anang Saighal, graduate student of the late Professor Leopold Roth, disassociating himself from any attempt to write a book based on Roth's so-called commentary on the Kama Sutra. The plot for Siegel's literary game is provided by the 'game of love' in the Kama Sutra. Echoes of Philip Roth evoked by Roth's name and sexual obsessions are followed by echoes of Nabokov's Lolita as Professor Roth records his love for an US-born Indian girl, Lalita Gupta. Siegel's own name is contained in the sound of Anang Saighal, who takes over Roth's unfinished translation and commentary on his death. In a convoluted production, Siegel accumulates academic and erotic jokes, as we read Roth's confessions and Saighal's commentaries on them. The text consists of facsimiles of other texts, reproductions of Kama Sutra web sites, cartoons, reproductions of typed term papers by Lalita, and much much more. The reader will need patience and, above all, a willingness to enter into the spirit of the game to get the most out of this exotic, erotic teaser. (Kirkus UK)