Product Description
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.
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/Praise
"This is a great hymn to poor, scabby humanity-a devastating portrait of poverty and the inhumanity of the rich to the poor. A masterpiece."—Edmund White
“A versatile narrator, Sartaj Gerewal masterfully gives voice to diverse plotlines and a varied cast of characters that include an Indian American professor on holiday, a London writer who spends a month each year with his Indian family, an abusive bear trainer trying to support his very large family, and a housemaid who escaped a terrible childhood.” —Library Journal
"A State of Freedom is formally audacious, vividly observed, and deeply imagined. Unsentimental yet full of heart, grimly real yet mysteriously dreamlike, with characters who continue to live their complicated lives long after you've turned the last page. Just a beautiful, beautiful piece of work."—Karen Joy Fowler
"An extraordinary, compassionate, complex, hard-hitting wonder of a book. It is in a class of its own." —Rose Tremain