A review by jcr610
Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar

4.0

A lovely, deeply intelligent, and often funny autofictional story of coming-of-age as an immigrant grad student in (mostly) New York. More than that, it’s about the imaginary life of nation-states—how we envision ourselves within and crossing borders, how home and place are defined, cosmopolitanism and its limits. Desire loosely structures the novel, like if Philip Roth’s horniness were added to the wandering meditations of Teju Cole or W.G. Sebald. The extent of the wandering wore me down a bit in the latter half, but what it lacks in narrative structure it makes up for in rewarding thoughtfulness.