From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter and
"one of India's greatest living authors" (O, The Oprah Magazine), a
poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the
present day about a son's quest to uncover the truth about his mother.
In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an
Englishman. The man was in fact German, but in small-town India in those
days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British. So begins
the "gracefully wrought" (Kirkus Reviews) story of Myshkin and his
mother, Gayatri, who rebels against tradition to follow her artist's
instinct for freedom. Freedom of a different kind is in the air across
India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The
Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two
strangers arrive in Gayatri's town, opening up to her the vision of
other possible lives. What took Myshkin's mother from India and
Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly
familiar universe? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was
abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between the
anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism.
Evocative and moving, "this mesmerizing exploration of the darker
consequences of freedom, love, and loyalty is an astonishing display of
Roy's literary prowess" (Publishers Weekly).
