The Middleman and Other Stories

These stories reveal a new world in our midst: a world transformed by people on the move from Asia and Latin America and their transformation by the idea of America.

An aristocratic Philippine woman negotiating a new life with an Atlanta investment banker; a veteran out to find himself in a Florida almost more foreign than Vietnam; a proud and proper Tamil Sri Lankan whose ten thousand mile journey falls short of its end, if not of its goal; an Indian student touring New York with her husband, and wondering if ‘freed from the dignities of old world culture, he too could get drunk and squirt…’

The Middleman peels away society’s skin, tearing off masks and opening old wounds in new ways. Passionate, comic, violent and ultimately tender, Bharati Mukherjee’s stories won the prestigious American National Book Critics’ Circle Award, 1988. She is published in Australia for the first time.