A memoir--written in the wake of a cancer diagnosis--that zeroes in on
the crux between two brothers: one who became an LAPD officer, and the
other a terrorist
Sunil Dutta is a twenty-year veteran of the LAPD. Before that, he was a
biologist at the University of California and a translator of classic
Indian poetry. Before that, he was a destitute refugee, one of so many
uprooted by the genocidal violence surrounding the Partition of India.
Back then, he had a brother. Back then, they were children together,
chasing whatever fun and solace they could find in impossible
conditions. Sunil looked up to Raju. He admired his strength, his
character.
Raju took a different path. He was arrested, he fled the law, he became
a fugitive. He became a terrorist. Then he became a father--and then a
murderer.
After being diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer later in life, Sunil
urgently wanted to understand what choices had led he and his brother
down such radically different paths. In Stealing Green Mangoes, Dutta
takes us from his family home in Rajasthan to America, to France, to the
streets of southeastern Los Angeles, homing in on the questions that
tore him and Raju apart: Can you outgrow the madness that made you? Can
you make peace with the ghosts of your past?
A memoir with sweeping, spiritual ambitions, Stealing Green Mangoes
tells the story of a man who pushed back against the forces that
captured his own brother and built a compassionate, meaningful life in a
broken world.
