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This novel of multiple narratives by gay Indian and Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author Neel Mukherjee explores the urge to escape the life we are given for something better, and transform the possibilities we are born into.
Set in contemporary India, this novel is composed of five loosely-interwoven stories which prise open the central, defining events of our century – displacement and migration. Five characters of very different classes, castes and circumstances - a vagrant and his dancing bear, a Maoist resistance fighter, a young Indian expat visiting his now very foreign homeland, a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, a construction worker - find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more.
Formally daring, fierce but full of pity, Mukherjee delivers not only a compelling and vivid panorama of 21st-century India, but also a deep meditation on some of the tensions that strain beneath India's colourful surface. At its heart though, is a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
Trade Paperback, 304 Pages, Published 2017
Author: Neel Mukherjee