Two brothers come to school and do nothing but tell stories. A man goes to a singles dance. A retired man in India tries to collect his pension. A woman tells the story of her husband's death in partition India. An unnamed narrator offers his notes on modern-day America, the culture of success. Some of the stories are set in India, some in America. Some stories are fable-like, others more realistic. Some deal with sex, some are intellectual stories. But all stories deal, in one way or another, with small, mediocre people, people trying to fit into a world of bigness, applause, success.
"Magnetically readable, Notes of a Mediocre Man offers alternating views of America and India through the eyes of ordinary people -- children, workers, survivors, underdogs -- whose inner and outer worlds are realized in a brilliantly poignant, fable-like style reminiscent of Isaac Bashevis Singer's. Aurora speaks for common or "mediocre" humanity, buffeted by the brutalities and dreams of an unsettled global era; his immigrants recall Bharati Mukherjee's characters struggling with disillusion, while his Indians are as knowingly and lovingly depicted as R.K. Narayan's broad range of human types. Yet his style is unique: the signature voice of a storyteller who unerringly fits all local themes and affiliations within the compass of philosophical questions -- of good and evil, innocence and experience. A beautiful book that reads fast but lingers long in memory." — Sharona Muir, author of Invisible Beasts: Tales of the Animals that Go Unseen Among Us
Born in Delhi, India,Bipin Auroracame to the United States when he was nine and currently lives in Oakland. His fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Nimrod International Journal, and Grain.
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