The Windfall
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- $159.00
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- $159.00
Descripción editorial
SELECTED AS A READ FOR LILLY SINGH'S @lillyslibrary BOOK CLUB!
'Ultra charming' Vogue
Uproarious, beady-eyed social comedy with a big heart' Mail on Sunday
'A complete joy from start to finish' Kamila Shamsie
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A sharply-observed tale of social aspiration, social anxiety and how to survive it in a rapidly changing new India.
Anil Kumar Jha has worked hard all his life to provide for his family. But now after thirty years, Anil has sold his company, and using the subsequent windfall has installed his wife Bindu and their wayward son Rupak in Gurgaon, one of Delhi's glossiest neighbourhoods.
But while sudden, fabulous wealth can buy you a lot of things – from designer saris to crystal-encrusted sofas to life-size reproductions of the Sistine Chapel – it can't buy the Jhas happiness. In fact, life is about to get a whole lot more complicated…
'Laugh-out-loud funny and yet deeply touching' Deborah Moggach, author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Culture and capital clash in Basu's charming, funny debut, which finds middle-aged Anil and Bindu Jha flush with new money after Anil sells his phone directory website for a small fortune. The couple moves from their modest, cramped, noisy home in an East Delhi apartment complex to the gated community of Gurgaon, where keeping up appearances means hiring security guards and making extravagant purchases. As they try to adjust to their new lifestyle, their son, Rupak, struggles with his M.B.A. program and his own needs from halfway around the world in upstate New York, oscillating between white Florida native Elizabeth and Serena, also from Delhi, with whom he feels pressured by tradition to pursue companionship. Add to the mix Reema, Mrs. Jha's old friend from East Delhi who finds herself wooed by the brother of the Jhas' new neighbor, and Basu sets the table for a modern and heartfelt comedy of haves and have-nots. Shuttling between characters, the novel addresses a rapidly changing India from a plethora of perspectives, and the result leaves readers laughing and engrossed.
