Corporate culture across continents

Arjun Mehta is a nerd and proud of it. His computer skills have given him a head-start in India's brash new economy. When he lands a plum job in Silicon Valley his family is thrown into a state of ecstatic confusion. His mother frets that he will get cold in "Amrika". His father strolls around at work dropping hints about his son's glittering future. His stroppy sister feels sidelined by the excitement and slopes upstairs for a sulk in her bedroom.

Hari Kunzru's new book is set in Delhi and its opening chapters seem to promise the reader a rich, vigorous and warm-hearted domestic comedy.

Then comes a shock. Arjun lands in America only to discover that his job is a swindle. Instead of a vast office and a gleaming skyscraper, he find himself at a grubby desk with a duff list of business clients to call. Too ashamed to admit the truth, he telephones his family every week and delights them with fabricated details of his thriving career, his opulent lifestyle and his expanding social network.

Kunzru, who won lots of plaudits for his debut novel, The Illusionist, has an excellent sense of place. The passages in which he traces Arjun's descent from energetic optimism to bewildered dislocation bear the authentic flavour of personal experience. We follow Arjun every step of the way as he trudges through California's soulless shopping malls. We feel with him a lofty disgust at "the idea of American poverty, especially a poverty which did not exclude cars, refrigerators, cable TV and obesity".

But pretty soon Arjun grows used to his surroundings. The cultural frictions fade away. He embarks on a fling with Chris, a bisexual driving instructor, and from this point his sojourn in America loses its charm and its narrative impetus.

As if sensing our disappointment, Kunzru introduces a brand-new character. Guy Swift is a corporate image broker, a selfcreated whizzkid who lives and breathes his own myth. We first meet him up in the clouds, relaxing in a first-class lounger, as he puts the finishing touches to his company motto. "The future is happening today and in today's fast-moving future, the worst place to do business is the past." The symbolism is pleasing and perceptive. Just as Arjun represents the biddable innocence of the Third World, so Guy stands for the sly and selfsatisfied decadence of the West.

When Guy lands in Dubai he meets up with Muammar bin Ali Al-Rahman, an Arab billionaire who controls a global network of leisure centres. During a calamitous game of golf, Guy attempts to win the Arab's favour with an eye-catching advertising slogan. "There is no game but golf and Al-Rahman is its only prophet." He is sent packing before they reach the 18th.

As in California, so in Dubai.

Kunzru has a wonderful way of evoking the flashy emptiness of corporate culture. The standardisation of everything clearly bothers him, the ruthless flattening out of all the ridges and bumps that exist between interacting cultures. But once he has worked off this particular anxiety, he loses faith in the characters he has created to examine it. The story ends with an inconclusive series of kidnappings, shoot-outs and disappearances.

It may be cruel to say so but the book feels like an advertisement for itself. The best and juiciest bits are up at the front. Once the author has secured your custom he doesn't deliver on the after-sales service. That said, Kunzru is too good to be dismissed on the strength of one underpowered performance. There is plenty to come from him yet. I hope more will mean better.