The Lives of Others

LoveReading Says

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2014.

Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2014. 

There are a lot of books about India, this is one of the best.  It is a huge 500+ page family saga with a family tree in the front which you will need to refer to often.  It covers some 70 years in the life of the Ghose family, once wealthy papermakers, now drowning in debt.  They are a traditional family of arranged marriages and a hierarchical structure who, despite hard times, need to keep up appearances.  But beneath the respectable surface there are, of course, tensions, rivalries, snobbery, jealousy and grudges.  The story switches between characters and through time with only a rebellious left-wing grandson being given the first person.  It is long and complicated and wonderful, totally absorbing with a good smattering of politics and culture amid the human drama.  Highly recommended.

The Costa Judges said Mukherjee's novel was “politically charged, ambitious and sometimes harsh in its evocation of India, it teems with memorable characters and the complexities of family.”

Sarah Broadhurst

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