The Lives of Others
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
Winner of the Encore Award
Shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
Longlisted for the IMPAC Prize
Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is a note.
At home, his family slowly begins to unravel. Poisonous rivalries grow, the once-thriving family business implodes and destructive secrets are unearthed. And all around them the sands are shifting as society fractures, for this is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change.
‘Deeply moving’ Amitav Ghosh
‘Terrifies and delights’ A S Byatt, Guardian
‘Unforgettable’ Daily Telegraph
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Unfolding in large part within the three-story Calcutta home of the well-to-do Ghosh family, The Lives of Others is a majestic epic. Indian novelist Neel Mukherjee puts himself in the shoes of a large cast of characters, documenting each fleeting thought, deep-seated grievance and grandiose deception in exquisite, microscopic detail. Filled with vivid colour and noise—and simmering tensions both domestic and political—this Man Booker–nominated novel plants you in the midst of the violent upheaval of ’60s India.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Money corrupts and wealth corrupts absolutely in Mukherjee's (A Life Apart) second novel, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize a devastatingly detailed account of a family's downfall amid the political turmoil and social unrest of India in the late 1960s and early '70s. In 1967, five generations of the Ghosh family occupy the four floors of their Calcutta home, from the top floor where Prafullanath, the patriarch, suffers the indignities of old age; his wife tyrannizes her daughter-in-law; and his eldest son Adinath, responsible for running the overextended family paper business, resides with wife and children down to street level, where the widow and two children of Prafullanath's youngest son share one small room. Adinath's two brothers and their families, along with their unmarriageable sister, complete the household, while servant Madan supplies unrequited compassion. Supratnik (Adinath's son) escapes to the countryside to sow Maoist rebellion as labor strife, jealousy, vice, and betrayal poisons relationships at home. Mukherjee reveals the unraveling social fabric through interwoven points of view. Powerful evocations of poverty and oppression begin in the prologue, recounting a debt-driven murder-suicide, and do not stop until the last excruciating scenes of police torture. This challenging epic has the scope of a political novel and the humanity of a family saga without sentimentality. Descriptions of a rooftop garden, the wonders of mathematics, and the charm of a secret flirtation offer brief respites from the economic and social injustices of post-independence India.
