A timely, provocative, poignant. campus novel that questions basic ideas of class, privilege and love.
What is the meaning of the teacher-student relationship, and what are the ethical boundaries in terms of friendship and personal intimacy? These questions lie at the heart of The Middle Finger. Megha, a young writing lecturer in New Jersey, struggles to finish her thesis and find full-time employment even as she begins to find underground fame as a poet. At the insistence of her professor, she moves to Delhi to teach at a new university. Soon, she discovers that the university is an island of wealth and privilege, and that her mandate is to teach and train some of the key members of India’s ruling class. But the calling is disrupted as an unexpected new friend enters her life and seeks her support.
In a sharp and lyrical prose. The Middle Finger, tells the story of a poet grappling with questions about mentorship and belonging, moving across geographical space and social boundaries.
Excerpts:
A man from Wall Street attends a poetry event | Mint Lounge
New novel dissects privilege in the classroom | Outlook India
A new book uses fiction to examine the ethics and boundaries for teachers with their students | Scroll
Interviews:
Author Saikat Majumdar on the makings of his book, The Middle Finger | Telegraph India
Eklavya, Power and the Tradition of Mentorship: An Interview with Saikat Majumdar | The Wire
‘Writing fiction is becoming other people along with many invented selves of one’s own’ | Scroll
‘Novels never feel completed’ | Hindustan Times
A Conversation with Saikat Majumdar | Daily Star
Kunzum Cafe: Stories over Coffee
Reviews:
Reviewed by Sonali Mujumdar | Hindustan Times
A Radical Post-millennial Adaptation of an Epic Story | The Punch
Poetry, Teachers, and Relationships | Saarang
Reviewed by Swati Joshi | Medical Humanities
Parallel Realities, Peripheral Existences: Saikat Majumdar’s The Middle Finger | The Daily Star
Overturning a World with the Middle Finger | Medium
Two Indias, Two Novels: Kunal Basu’s ‘In an Ideal World’ and Saikat Majumdar’s ‘The Middle Finger’ | Cafe Dissensus
A White Brilliance: Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta reviews Saikat Majumdar’s The Middle Finger | The Hindu
A Masterpiece of Subtlety and Gentle Ellipsis | Los Angeles Review of Books
New Novel Interrogates Privilege in the World of Teachers | Scroll
Poetry, Privilege and a Teacher’s Duties | Asian Age
Interviews:
In conversation with Shoma A. Chatterji | One India One People
The Novelist as Professor: In Conversation with Saikat Majumdar | Ashoka University
Saikat Majumdar, author, The Middle Finger – ‘Novels never feel completed’ | Hindustan Times
Ekalavya, Power and the Tradition of Mentorship: An Interview With Saikat Majumdar | The Wire
Event Recordings:
The Nature of Narratives: Saikat Majumdar and Tanuj Solanki in conversation with Anukrti Upadhyay
Can One Learn to Write? The Middle FInger and the Language of Imagination
Fiction, Poetry and Performance: In Conversation with Arundhati Subramaniam
Saikat Majumdar 