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A Fine Balanceby Rohinton Mistry
Staff Pick
For a while it seemed that novels set in India were all the rage. My favorite is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. His massive tome ranges across the vast chasms of that giant subcontinent, all from the cramped apartment of Dina Dalal. Through her eyes, along with those of her two impoverished tailors and her bright if unambitious nephew, we are provided a glimpse into every corner of Indian society. Mistry describes the absurdities and petty prejudices held by many Indians in a way that would make Flannery O'Connor or Carson McCullers proud. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers — a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village — will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state. Review:"Those who continue to harp on the decline of the novel . . . ought to consider Rohinton Mistry. He needs no infusion of magic realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical." The New York Times
Review:"Astonishing. . . . A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life." Wall Street Journal
Review:"A serious and important work . . . the product of high intelligence and passionate conviction." New York Review of Books
Review:"Monumental. . . . Few have caught the real sorrow and inexplicable strength of India, the unaccountable crookedness and sweetness, as well as Mistry." Pico Iyer, Time
About the AuthorRohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives near Toronto. His first novel, Such a Long Journey, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received, among other awards, the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book of the Year. A Fine Balance is his second novel, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction, the Giller Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize as well as a Booker Prize finalist. Mistry is also the author of Swimming Lessons, a collection of short stories.
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