Mukherjee, Neel

These pages abound with misery: animal mistreatment, the harsh plight of refugees, and dire poverty. But the rewards--indelible images, admirable story-telling, and wicked good writing--are many.

Showing so many hopes and dreams crushed by poverty, Mukherjee's uncompromising, unsettling novel puts a human face on income inequality and classism and is, thus, an important addition to all serious fiction collections. ["Mukherjee gathers a cast of untethered characters to present urgent, even beseeching, testimony on how the titular 'state of freedom' is too often more impossible dream than achievable reality…. Libraries with internationally savvy audiences should prepare for substantial demand":LJ 11/1/17 starred review of the Norton hc.]

In this follow-up to the Man Booker-short-listed The Lives of Others, various narratives link an Indian-born father and his American son visiting India; the construction worker they're shocked to see fall to his death; an indigent man and his bear, related to the worker; an Indian-raised, London-based man interested in his parents' Mumbai cook; and a revolutionary-minded servant girl...