What happens when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into?
In this stunning novel, prize-winning author Neel Mukherjee wrests open the central, defining events of our century: displacement and migration. Five characters, in very different circumstances—from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, to a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city—find out the meanings of dislocation and the desire for more.
Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives—formally daring, fierce, but full of pity—delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. He is the author of A State of Freedom, A Life Apart, winner of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction, among other honors, and The Lives of Others, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Prize. He lives in London.
