Synopses & Reviews
An absorbing family saga set amid the commotion of the last forty years of Indian history
The Way Things Were opens with the death of Toby, the Maharaja of Kalasuryaketu, a Sanskritist who has not set foot in India for two decades. Moving back and forth across three sections, between todays Delhi and the 1970s, 80s, and 90s in turn, the novel tells the story of a family held at the mercy of the times.
A masterful interrogation of the relationships between past and present and among individual lives, events, and culture, Aatish Taseers The Way Things Were takes its title from the Sanskrit word for history, itihasa, whose literal translation is “the way things indeed were.” Told in prose that is at once intimate and panoramic, and threaded through with Sanskrit as central metaphor and chorus, this is a hugely ambitious and important book, alive to all the commotion of the last forty years but never losing its brilliant grasp on the current moment.
Review
Praise for
Noon“Combining a heady cocktail of theft, blackmail and dysfunctional family relations with a touch of the Kafkaesque, this is a powerfully written and deeply thoughtful work.” —Anna Scott, The Guardian
Synopsis
The Way Things Were opens with the death of Toby, the Maharaja of Kalasuryaketu, a Sanskritist who has not set foot in India for two decades. It falls to his son, Skanda, to return Toby's body to his birthplace, "a tin-pot kingdom" not worth "one air-gun salute." This journey takes him halfway around the world and returns him to his family, the drawing-room elite of Delhi, whose narcissism and infighting he has worked hard to escape. It also forces him to reckon with his parents' marriage, a turbulent love affair that began in passion but ended in pain and futility.
Aatish Taseer's The Way Things Were takes its title from the Sanskrit word for history, itihasa, whose literal translation is "the way things indeed were." It is both an intimate portrait of a family and a panoramic vision of the last half century of life in Delhi, with Sanskrit woven in as central metaphor and chorus. Through one man's struggle with his inheritance, it explores the cultural schizophrenia of modern India and the difficulty of building honestly on the past.
About the Author
Aatish Taseer is the author of the novels The Temple-Goers and Noon, as well as the memoir Stranger to History: A Sons Journey Through Islamic Lands. He has worked as a reporter for Time magazine, and has written for The Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and Esquire. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in London and Delhi.