A state of freedom : a novel

Title:

Author:

Mukherjee, Neel, author.

Personal Author:

Mukherjee, Neel, author.

ISBN:

9780393292909

Edition:

First American Edition.

Physical Description:

278 pages ; 25 cm

Abstract:

What happens when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into?--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.

What happens when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? 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.

Subject Term:

Migration, Internal -- India -- Fiction.

Self-actualization (Psychology) -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

India -- Fiction.

Genre:

Domestic fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION MUKHERJ	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

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.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Five diverse lives in India are traced and linked, exposing the aching gulfs in experience and opportunity that exist in a complex nation.Particle physicists, Maoist terrorists, punitive employers, servants, and migrs all have roles in Mukherjee's (The Lives of Others, 2014, etc.) third novel, which is composed of interwoven short fictions moving between seething cities and rural life at its most impoverished. Themes of money, work, politics, survival, and women's roles connect the characters. In Bombay, an elderly couple with a new cook welcomes home their liberal son, now living overseas, on his annual visit. His keen interest in food and research for a cookbook lead to awkward efforts to befriend the cook, resulting in a visit to her family's home, a trip seamed with shame, pity, and wonder. Elsewhere, a poor villager, crushed under the burden of trying to provide not only for his own family, but his brother's, toothe brother has gone to find work on construction sites in the citiesis relieved, perhaps, by the discovery of a bear cub. Having trained the bear to "dance"an unbearably cruel processman and animal begin a life together on the road and a kind of parallel existence, begging for food and money, debased and suffering. The fate of the absent brother is glimpsed in the sinister, haunting opening of the book and confirmed in its final section. The London-based Mukherjee surprises once again with the form of his storytelling while confirming anew the depth of his empathy. His characters' life journeys are often painful while his descriptions of their circumstances are unsentimental, vivid, unsparing. Above all there is compassion here, alongside a focus that depicts gross inequities with a grim tenderness.A calm, compelling, unshrinking portrait of humanity in transition; both disturbing and dazzling. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.