A cross between a collection of philosophical investigations and idle banter, In Praise of Laziness and Other Essays, is a celebration of what Milan Kundera defined as ‘Mystification: the active form of refusing to take the world seriously’. From an Erasmian encomium to laziness, a literary forensic report on the adult years of Sukumar Ray’s Pagla Dashu and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the joys of staying indoors, to the exquisite pleasures of an electric blanket—and with a science fiction story on colonisation bunged in—this book is the equivalent of a meandering river in which the reader dips his or her toes in, not knowing whether a dolphin will come by or a piranha take a snap. This is a book that’s equal parts serious as well as frivolous, except you never quite know which parts are which.