A fictionalised, historical glimpse into the birth of American democracy cannot fail to intrigue, coming as it does at the end of a decade in which that many-headed beast has spurred violent debate from drawing-room to dhaba across the world. And Peter Carey’s deliciously funny, sly and — best of all — beautifully composed portrait of that New World as seen through the eyes of an alarmed but often sympathetic European nobleman provides myriad perspectives from which to assess how truly revolutionary — and grotesque — the first blotchy blueprints of modern democracy must have been. But the most surprising achievement of Parrot and Olivier in America is that it captures so accurately, and unselfconsciously, the contortions of the democratic conundrum as it exists today right here, in India.
Facts first: Parrot and Olivier recounts the adventures and slow-cooked friendship of Jack Larrit alias Parrot, and Olivier de Garmont, loosely based on the political philosopher Alexis de Toqueville. Both carry heavy, heaving pasts. Parrot is tragically separated from his father and his country, flung into the service of the decaying French aristocracy armed with little except a talent for mimicry and art; and Olivier de Garmont, scion of French nobility, is haunted by the horrors of a Revolution that spared his parents’ necks but grips his psyche as tightly as medicinal leeches do his flesh.
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