New Delhi, May 17 -- In the history of literature, several outstanding novels have captured the personal and societal challenges associated with upward mobility. Once a man could make his fortune through intrepid adventure (R.L. Stevenson), while a woman could do so by marrying the right man (Jane Austen). In the last 30 years, the "office novel" has charted how capitalism "plunders the sensuality of the body," to quote the scholar Terry Eagleton. Douglas Coupland's Microserfs (1995), Walter Kirn's Up in the Air (2001) and Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End (2007) are some of the finest works of this subgenre.

To those worthy names I would add Mamta Kalia's Daud (2000), recently translated into English by Jerry Pinto as Rat Race. A ...