Chatterjee, who became a civil servant in 1983,[1] provides key insight into the disparity between rural and urban lived experiences witnessed in his generation.

[2] "Agastya Sen is a young Indian civil servant whose imagination is dominated by women, literature, and soft drugs.

Agastya Sen's sense of dislocation is only compounded by his extreme lack of interest in the bizarre ways of government and administration, while his mind is dominated by the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and images from his previous urban life.

"[8] According to the Library of Congress New Delhi Office, "This vivid account of "real India" by the young officer posted to the small provincial town of Madna is "a funny, wryly observed account of Agastya Sen's year in the sticks," as described by a reviewer in The Observer, and "A review in Punch described the book as "Beautifully written … English, August is a marvelously intelligent and entertaining novel, and especially for anyone curious about modern India.

"[1] In 2018, on the occasion of the 30-year anniversary reprinting, Supriya Nair writes for Scroll.in, "It remains to be seen if a new generation of readers laugh at the jokes.