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Author Neel Mukherjee gained a new level of fame when his novel The Lives of Others was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. However, his first novel was celebrated for its frank and exuberant depiction of the main character’s gay life and was compared to Alan Hollinghurst’s groundbreaking The Swimming Pool Library.
Ritwik Ghosh, twenty-two and recently orphaned, finds the chance to start a new life when he arrives in England from Calcutta. But to do so, he must not only relive his entire past but also make sense of his relationship with his mother - scarred, abusive and all-consuming.
As a scholarship boy studying English literature at one of the universities of Oxford, he doesnt find the salvation he was hoping for. He experiences dislocation and detachment, and dives into exploring the city’s gay life, compulsively cruising the public toilets. Eventually, he moves to London, where he drops out of official existence into a shadowy hinterland of illegal immigrants. But then, one night, in the badlands of King's Cross, Ritwik runs into the suave, unfathomable Zafar bin Hashm. As present and past of several lives collide, Ritwik's own goes into free fall.
Paperback, 416 Pages, Published 2011
Author: Neel Mukherjee