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The Lives of Others
The aging patriarch and matriarch of the Ghosh family preside over their large household, made up of their five adult children and their respective children, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. Each set of family members occupies a floor of the home, in accordance to their standing within the family. Poisonous rivalries between sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the family business threaten to unravel bonds of kinship as social unrest brews in greater Indian society. This is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change: the chasm between the generations, and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider. The eldest grandchild, Supratik, compelled by his idealism, becomes dangerously involved in extremist political activism—an action that further catalyzes the decay of the Ghosh home.
Ambitious, rich, and compassionate, The Lives of Others anatomizes the soul of a nation as it unfolds a family history, at the same time as it questions the nature of political action and the limits of empathy. It is a novel of unflinching power and emotional force.
Ambitious, rich, and compassionate, The Lives of Others anatomizes the soul of a nation as it unfolds a family history, at the same time as it questions the nature of political action and the limits of empathy. It is a novel of unflinching power and emotional force.
530 pages, Paperback
First published May 22, 2014
595 people are currently reading
14423 people want to read
About the author
Neel Mukherjee
18 books261 followersNeel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. His first novel,
A Life Apart
, won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction, among other honors, and his second novel,
The Lives of Others
, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Prize. He lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 681 reviews
February 10, 2017
Neel Mukherjee's 'The Lives of Others' has one of the most heartbreaking openings to a book, that completely underlines the vast difference between the haves and the have-nots, and the inevitability of a violent uprising against the injustice of it all.
Calcutta 1967, with the economy in decline, and a Government unable or unwilling to deal with it, the city descends into riots. It is against this backdrop that we meet the Ghosh family, part of the elite of this city. This is a powerful family saga, sumptuous in its descriptions of a family and a city in turmoil. It pulls you in almost instantly, sometimes into situations that you'd rather not be witness to. There are some graphic scenes of torture that are really hard to read, but I do think they're integral to the story. The infighting and jealousy within the family reveals some very unpleasant characters, but they are undoubtably fascinating. The story is seen from the perspectives of both the family members, living in their four storey home in Calcutta, and Supratik, the family member who walks out of the family home. Supatrik becomes a political activist, when he sees the way he and the rest of the Ghosh's have all they want, and others have nothing. It's engrossing, and deeply affecting, as it exposes the the gulf between rich and poor, us and them. A definite must read.
Calcutta 1967, with the economy in decline, and a Government unable or unwilling to deal with it, the city descends into riots. It is against this backdrop that we meet the Ghosh family, part of the elite of this city. This is a powerful family saga, sumptuous in its descriptions of a family and a city in turmoil. It pulls you in almost instantly, sometimes into situations that you'd rather not be witness to. There are some graphic scenes of torture that are really hard to read, but I do think they're integral to the story. The infighting and jealousy within the family reveals some very unpleasant characters, but they are undoubtably fascinating. The story is seen from the perspectives of both the family members, living in their four storey home in Calcutta, and Supratik, the family member who walks out of the family home. Supatrik becomes a political activist, when he sees the way he and the rest of the Ghosh's have all they want, and others have nothing. It's engrossing, and deeply affecting, as it exposes the the gulf between rich and poor, us and them. A definite must read.
February 5, 2015
First of all, many, many best wishes and congratulations to the author, Neel Mukherjee for his book, The Lives of Others getting nominated in the Longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize. And secondly, a huge thanks to Neel Mukherjee and his publicist, for sending me over a copy of his book, in return for an honest review. Yes, I definitely feel over-the-moon and proud for getting this opportunity and I'll always be grateful to the author, Neel Mukherjee.
Supratik says,
"Ma, I feel I live in a borrowed house. It's time to find my own."
in his letter addressed to his Ma (mother), thereby embarking upon a journey to the land of red earth where the colour red dominates over green and blue, leaving behind the very comfort of his cocoon of love and security. They why does Supratik call his home as "borrowed"?
Neel Mukherjee, an Indian author, residing in London, has entranced us with his novel, The Lives of Others where he has introduced us with the face of every Bengali joint families in Kolkata (Calcutta), through the medium of his very own created, "The Ghosh Family". Being a 21st century, Bengali girl, I must confess that the concept of joint family has become very much extinct in Calcutta and it is the uber-cool trend of generation of nuclear families. Although the author has time-travelled to the late 1960s to craft this tale of his, still after reading this book and about all the flaws of a joint family, it leaves you with a slight nostalgia and impression about the very concept of joint families.
Auguste Napier, an American author has said,
"In each family a story is playing itself out and each family's story embodies its hope and despair."
Similarly, in "The Ghosh Family", each character has their own story to tell which altogether manifest a riveting chronicle in their four-storeyed house in Bhowanipore, Calcutta. From Prafullanath, being the head of the family, by standing up his own business to his wife, Charubala, in supporting her husband's business through thick and thin, to his four sons and one daughter, Adinath, the elder brother, who gave up his dream in being an engineer and harvested an awful habit in the dark alleys of Calcutta, Priyonath, the second most elder brother, who allied up with his only sister, Chaya, and loved her like his soul mate, Bholanath, the third most elder brother, who harvested the "talented" under his wings and finally, Somnath, the youngest brother among the 5 siblings, who had never distinguished the good from bad and gladly followed on to the path to self-destruction, each character had their own agenda to secretive animosity to personal grudges amongst each other. But why? Well, as said by Prafullanath about his paper mill business that the first generation builds up the business, the second generation exploits it with their jealousy and with the third generation being just the meagre audience. From the outside, "The Ghoshes” tried to depict themselves as one strong-family standing united, but in the inside, without even their knowledge and realization, the earth was slowly moving away due to rage, hatred and jealousy with each passing day. Meanwhile, amidst of "The Ghoshes" internal wars, Adinath's elder son, Supratik, leaves his home to join the extremist political activism of Bengal called the Naxalite movement, where a bunch of young men sacrificed their home, family and material needs in order to fight for those who cannot make a stand in the face of the world and remains ill-fated for the rest of their lives, thereby changing the world and providing equality to the peasants and the farmers class.
"The Ghosh Family" has proved that the politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy. Neel Mukherjee has blended and portrayed both the external politics in West Bengal and the politics in a joint family very strikingly. With the choice of his eloquent words, the author has hatched a powerful tale which shows us the fractures in the Calcutta society and the desiccation in the soils of West Bengal.
The author's prose is poetic and simultaneously depicted anger amongst the dysfunctional Ghosh family. What I loved the most is how honestly and vividly the author has unfolded the blight of "The Ghosh Family" with each of the psychologically flawed members of this family.
The Lives of Others weaves the differences between social and political, rich and poor, young and old, tradition and modernity and how compassionate steps should be nurtured among every strata of individuals in a society to bridge these differences.
Supratik says,
"Ma, I feel I live in a borrowed house. It's time to find my own."
in his letter addressed to his Ma (mother), thereby embarking upon a journey to the land of red earth where the colour red dominates over green and blue, leaving behind the very comfort of his cocoon of love and security. They why does Supratik call his home as "borrowed"?
Neel Mukherjee, an Indian author, residing in London, has entranced us with his novel, The Lives of Others where he has introduced us with the face of every Bengali joint families in Kolkata (Calcutta), through the medium of his very own created, "The Ghosh Family". Being a 21st century, Bengali girl, I must confess that the concept of joint family has become very much extinct in Calcutta and it is the uber-cool trend of generation of nuclear families. Although the author has time-travelled to the late 1960s to craft this tale of his, still after reading this book and about all the flaws of a joint family, it leaves you with a slight nostalgia and impression about the very concept of joint families.
Auguste Napier, an American author has said,
"In each family a story is playing itself out and each family's story embodies its hope and despair."
Similarly, in "The Ghosh Family", each character has their own story to tell which altogether manifest a riveting chronicle in their four-storeyed house in Bhowanipore, Calcutta. From Prafullanath, being the head of the family, by standing up his own business to his wife, Charubala, in supporting her husband's business through thick and thin, to his four sons and one daughter, Adinath, the elder brother, who gave up his dream in being an engineer and harvested an awful habit in the dark alleys of Calcutta, Priyonath, the second most elder brother, who allied up with his only sister, Chaya, and loved her like his soul mate, Bholanath, the third most elder brother, who harvested the "talented" under his wings and finally, Somnath, the youngest brother among the 5 siblings, who had never distinguished the good from bad and gladly followed on to the path to self-destruction, each character had their own agenda to secretive animosity to personal grudges amongst each other. But why? Well, as said by Prafullanath about his paper mill business that the first generation builds up the business, the second generation exploits it with their jealousy and with the third generation being just the meagre audience. From the outside, "The Ghoshes” tried to depict themselves as one strong-family standing united, but in the inside, without even their knowledge and realization, the earth was slowly moving away due to rage, hatred and jealousy with each passing day. Meanwhile, amidst of "The Ghoshes" internal wars, Adinath's elder son, Supratik, leaves his home to join the extremist political activism of Bengal called the Naxalite movement, where a bunch of young men sacrificed their home, family and material needs in order to fight for those who cannot make a stand in the face of the world and remains ill-fated for the rest of their lives, thereby changing the world and providing equality to the peasants and the farmers class.
"The Ghosh Family" has proved that the politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy. Neel Mukherjee has blended and portrayed both the external politics in West Bengal and the politics in a joint family very strikingly. With the choice of his eloquent words, the author has hatched a powerful tale which shows us the fractures in the Calcutta society and the desiccation in the soils of West Bengal.
The author's prose is poetic and simultaneously depicted anger amongst the dysfunctional Ghosh family. What I loved the most is how honestly and vividly the author has unfolded the blight of "The Ghosh Family" with each of the psychologically flawed members of this family.
The Lives of Others weaves the differences between social and political, rich and poor, young and old, tradition and modernity and how compassionate steps should be nurtured among every strata of individuals in a society to bridge these differences.
April 26, 2016
The Booker book I have been waiting for. Totally involving, emotionally gripping and thought-provoking.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowlands has as its jumping off point the Naxalite rebellion, social unrest in Bengal and police repression in Calcutta in the late 60s. I found that book disappointing, but the early Calcutta scenes did stay with me. Now Neel Mukherjee takes us inside – deep inside – that period of social upheaval in India, also giving us a sweeping family saga that stretches the century and that doesn’t hold back from grappling with very troubling questions of horrific social inequity, while also asking when and if it is right to put the struggle against those inequities above family ties. It’s not an easy book at all – parts are truly horrific – and if I had a complaint, it’s that it’s hard to like any of the main characters. That said, I could not put this book down – I was completely sucked in, and engaged both mentally and emotionally. The jumping around in time and managing a host of characters was done adroitly.
Recommended for anyone interested in India, but also everyone who enjoys an engrossing family saga - wherever set.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowlands has as its jumping off point the Naxalite rebellion, social unrest in Bengal and police repression in Calcutta in the late 60s. I found that book disappointing, but the early Calcutta scenes did stay with me. Now Neel Mukherjee takes us inside – deep inside – that period of social upheaval in India, also giving us a sweeping family saga that stretches the century and that doesn’t hold back from grappling with very troubling questions of horrific social inequity, while also asking when and if it is right to put the struggle against those inequities above family ties. It’s not an easy book at all – parts are truly horrific – and if I had a complaint, it’s that it’s hard to like any of the main characters. That said, I could not put this book down – I was completely sucked in, and engaged both mentally and emotionally. The jumping around in time and managing a host of characters was done adroitly.
Recommended for anyone interested in India, but also everyone who enjoys an engrossing family saga - wherever set.
September 8, 2014
Finally! I feel like I've been reading this book for a year...and I can't say it has been a particularly enjoyable one. I have found it very confusing: too many characters (none of them likeable, apart maybe from Sona), too many stories, too much jumping around in the story line...I was hoping to learn about the history, the politics of the time but none of the reference were really explained. I leave this book with a sense of boredom and disappointment.
April 25, 2016
As I read this, especially while feeling bogged down halfway through due to all the minutiae (it's not worn lightly), my mind drifted to other novels I felt did this kind of story better...
For one, I was reminded of A Suitable Boy, a book that at 1474 pages I could read again, while this one at 505 pages, I found too long. For another, The Lowland, though my least favorite Jhumpa Lahiri, covers some of the same time period, as well as a somewhat similar family situation with a widowed daughter-in-law. While Mukherjee delves into the Naxalite movement in more detail, I find Lahiri's prose style more congenial and her characters more developed.
Mukherjee is an intelligent writer, but I was never fully invested in his characters or in his story, not even with a scene near the end that's obviously supposed to greatly affect the reader. At that point all I could think of is a comparable scene in Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena that's more effective.
With an epigraph from War and Peace and the alternations between a family's life in Calcutta and a grandson's revolutionary activities in the field, perhaps Mukherjee intended this to be his War and Peace. I sincerely apologize to him for thinking of other books (not to mention Midnight's Children, The Raj Quartet and The God of Small Things) while reading his novel: I couldn't help it.
For one, I was reminded of A Suitable Boy, a book that at 1474 pages I could read again, while this one at 505 pages, I found too long. For another, The Lowland, though my least favorite Jhumpa Lahiri, covers some of the same time period, as well as a somewhat similar family situation with a widowed daughter-in-law. While Mukherjee delves into the Naxalite movement in more detail, I find Lahiri's prose style more congenial and her characters more developed.
Mukherjee is an intelligent writer, but I was never fully invested in his characters or in his story, not even with a scene near the end that's obviously supposed to greatly affect the reader. At that point all I could think of is a comparable scene in Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena that's more effective.
With an epigraph from War and Peace and the alternations between a family's life in Calcutta and a grandson's revolutionary activities in the field, perhaps Mukherjee intended this to be his War and Peace. I sincerely apologize to him for thinking of other books (not to mention Midnight's Children, The Raj Quartet and The God of Small Things) while reading his novel: I couldn't help it.
June 21, 2018
"Masterful...
An unforgettable portrait of one family riven by the forces of history and their own desires."
(That is how the Daily Telegraph described this book).
Hmmm, perhaps it would have turned out to be unforgettable, but I abandoned it after a series of stop-start attempts.
Maybe it was because the prose was heavy going (monotonous even), or that my flow was impeded by having to reference Bengali words every so often?
Or maybe it was because I was only ever on the side of the downtrodden and the impoverished?
Or perhaps it was because I had started to dip into Isabel Allende's spectacular novel The House of the Spirits? She does this sort of thing so much better.
I tried, I really did try, and I adore exotic tales based in India, but life is too short to waste on novels that don't grip or entertain.
It is with a heavy heart that I write this. The author must have expended an inhuman amount of effort and I'm convinced that less curmudgeonly readers than myself will absolutely love it.
Besides, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so what do I know?
An unforgettable portrait of one family riven by the forces of history and their own desires."
(That is how the Daily Telegraph described this book).
Hmmm, perhaps it would have turned out to be unforgettable, but I abandoned it after a series of stop-start attempts.
Maybe it was because the prose was heavy going (monotonous even), or that my flow was impeded by having to reference Bengali words every so often?
Or maybe it was because I was only ever on the side of the downtrodden and the impoverished?
Or perhaps it was because I had started to dip into Isabel Allende's spectacular novel The House of the Spirits? She does this sort of thing so much better.
I tried, I really did try, and I adore exotic tales based in India, but life is too short to waste on novels that don't grip or entertain.
It is with a heavy heart that I write this. The author must have expended an inhuman amount of effort and I'm convinced that less curmudgeonly readers than myself will absolutely love it.
Besides, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so what do I know?
January 24, 2014
This is a terrific book of the kind that doesn’t come along very often, and I urge you to read it. I was lucky enough to receive an advance proof copy, as Neel Mukherjee, the author, is an old friend, and I’m very proud to be included in the acknowledgements. However, the opinions that follow are all my own!
So – this is a BIG book, and first and foremost, it is a great feat of storytelling. Read it, luxuriate in it, discuss it with your book group. I’m not a gambler, but I’m tempted to put money on it – if it doesn’t at least make it to the shortlists for some major literary awards, there’s no justice! You will gasp, wince, laugh and maybe weep. (I did.)
The Lives of Others is profound, astute, tragic, ribald, poetic and shocking – a portmanteau novel with room for everything; it is social history, family saga, a tale of forbidden love and a meditation on why people behave the way they do – on the transcendent and destructive impulses and where they can lead. It is also an unforgettable indictment of the price of keeping the poor hungry and indebted, and a clear-sighted portrayal of what happens when people are so oppressed they have nothing left to lose.
The fear of being poor and the social cost of poverty are real driving forces in the story; it is a battle for survival that many of its participants are doomed to lose. It is also an acutely observed study of family relationships, and the sometimes brutal interplay of rivalry, power, duty and rebellion. And I have never read anything that has given me such an insight into the deadening effect of the life of undernourished, back-breaking toil that is the lot of so many, and underpins the wealth, security, and freedom to think, of the rest. It is lyrical too; ugliness, cruelty, beauty and yearning are all given their place.
If, like me, you know next to nothing about Bengali literature, love of language and music, food, wedding traditions, extended family life, exclamations, and late 1960s revolutionary unrest, you will know rather more by the time you finish. It will be an education, of the most vivid, immersive, fully realised and revelatory kind.
So – this is a BIG book, and first and foremost, it is a great feat of storytelling. Read it, luxuriate in it, discuss it with your book group. I’m not a gambler, but I’m tempted to put money on it – if it doesn’t at least make it to the shortlists for some major literary awards, there’s no justice! You will gasp, wince, laugh and maybe weep. (I did.)
The Lives of Others is profound, astute, tragic, ribald, poetic and shocking – a portmanteau novel with room for everything; it is social history, family saga, a tale of forbidden love and a meditation on why people behave the way they do – on the transcendent and destructive impulses and where they can lead. It is also an unforgettable indictment of the price of keeping the poor hungry and indebted, and a clear-sighted portrayal of what happens when people are so oppressed they have nothing left to lose.
The fear of being poor and the social cost of poverty are real driving forces in the story; it is a battle for survival that many of its participants are doomed to lose. It is also an acutely observed study of family relationships, and the sometimes brutal interplay of rivalry, power, duty and rebellion. And I have never read anything that has given me such an insight into the deadening effect of the life of undernourished, back-breaking toil that is the lot of so many, and underpins the wealth, security, and freedom to think, of the rest. It is lyrical too; ugliness, cruelty, beauty and yearning are all given their place.
If, like me, you know next to nothing about Bengali literature, love of language and music, food, wedding traditions, extended family life, exclamations, and late 1960s revolutionary unrest, you will know rather more by the time you finish. It will be an education, of the most vivid, immersive, fully realised and revelatory kind.
January 17, 2015
Between the reviews and the fact that the book was shortlisted for the Man Booker I was expecting a really gripping and engrossing novel. The book is so flat and one dimensional, I wonder after reading the quotes on the jacket, if we in fact read the same book? It is well written in parts but a largely predictable storyline, dense and confusing historical references and completely uninteresting characters resulted in a really unsatisfying read.
October 11, 2014
Sometimes life really is too short...
This is the story of a large, extended family all living under one roof in Calcutta, and of one of the children of the family who becomes a Marxist agitator following the Naxalbari incident. I abandoned it at the halfway point – sometimes life really is too short. Fellow Amazon reviewer 'Mister Hobgoblin' has described it as 'Like The Lowland, but twice as long and half as good' and I think that's a perfect description. And I thought The Lowland was pretty underwhelming...
There are about twenty characters in the family and the book jumps about between them in a fairly random fashion. The timeline also varies and it's often not made clear what period we're in, though the main storyline seems to be the one set in the '60s. Combine this confusion with the fact that the author (probably realistically) uses three or more different variations of name for each character and frankly the book becomes extremely hard to follow. There is a family tree at the beginning, but I really expect authors to be skilled enough to keep me informed without me constantly having to break off to go consult charts, or look up the glossary of endless Indian words that are included in this book which is supposedly written in English (by an Indian born/English resident author).
But I would have been willing to make the effort to plough through the book if the story were interesting, the writing beautiful or the characters enjoyable to spend time with. Unfortunately that's not the case. The story is simply an observation of this unpleasant family that goes on and on in endless detail but never actually heads anywhere. The exception to this is the strand about the budding terrorist. Cut in at the end of chapters, this strand is told as a series of extracts from letters he sends to an unnamed person, possibly a lover – at the point I abandoned it we still don't know. Here we learn all about the lives of the rural poor, but from a distance – we never actually get to know any of the poor, just this angst-ridden middle-class Marxist's interpretation of them, liberally sprinkled with a regurgitation of Marxist theory – at great length.
The quality of the writing is fine – neither particularly bad nor good. Occasional passages are well written and there's no doubt he gives a very, very, very detailed picture of everything he describes (including lots and lots of abstruse mathematical theories – well, he obviously knew them, so why not put them in?). In my review of The Goldfinch, I quipped that Donna Tartt had obviously bought a couple of enormous economy sized bags of words and used them all – Mukherjee has obviously been to the same shop. I saw him being interviewed about the book on the BBC News channel and when asked about the length of the book he replied that he wanted the book to be 'densely rendered' (Good news! It is!) and that if people were paying £17 for the hardback he felt they should get their money's worth. Personally, I'd prefer to pay for quality rather than quantity. He also said that he thought even Indian people would find it hard to really understand the 'Bengali-ness' that he is apparently trying to portray – I guess therefore it's understandable that this Scot struggled to feel engaged.
The real flaw in the book though is that, out of this huge cast of characters, there isn't a single one who is likeable, engaging or even particularly interesting. The family on the whole dislike each other and that I did find understandable, since I disliked them all. We have bullying of children, animal cruelty, incest (or as good as), and sexual perversion of the most ridiculous kind about which it has been my misfortune to read. We have some members of the family being treated as second-class citizens within the home, sibling rivalry taken to extremes, obnoxious wives battling for domestic supremacy, servants being treated as badly as servants usually are, and beggars being turned away at the door to starve. Two weeks in this family and I'd have become a Marxist terrorist myself, I think.
I said it when I was reviewing Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance and I'll say it again – I do not believe that India is this unrelievedly awful. The problem with unmitigated misery is that it becomes numbing after a while – there has to be something to contrast it with if it's going to have an emotional impact. Or alternatively it has to be written so beautifully that the words themselves become the point. All of these people are so deeply unpleasant that this reader couldn't care less what happened to them. In fact, I was rather hoping for an alien invasion to brighten things up.
In truth, this probably deserves about three stars for the writing and descriptions but, since I found it such a dismal, tedious and ultimately pointless read that I couldn't bring myself to finish it, I feel I have no option but to put it in the 1-star slot. It's been shortlisted for the Booker, of course...
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Random House Vintage.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
This is the story of a large, extended family all living under one roof in Calcutta, and of one of the children of the family who becomes a Marxist agitator following the Naxalbari incident. I abandoned it at the halfway point – sometimes life really is too short. Fellow Amazon reviewer 'Mister Hobgoblin' has described it as 'Like The Lowland, but twice as long and half as good' and I think that's a perfect description. And I thought The Lowland was pretty underwhelming...
There are about twenty characters in the family and the book jumps about between them in a fairly random fashion. The timeline also varies and it's often not made clear what period we're in, though the main storyline seems to be the one set in the '60s. Combine this confusion with the fact that the author (probably realistically) uses three or more different variations of name for each character and frankly the book becomes extremely hard to follow. There is a family tree at the beginning, but I really expect authors to be skilled enough to keep me informed without me constantly having to break off to go consult charts, or look up the glossary of endless Indian words that are included in this book which is supposedly written in English (by an Indian born/English resident author).
But I would have been willing to make the effort to plough through the book if the story were interesting, the writing beautiful or the characters enjoyable to spend time with. Unfortunately that's not the case. The story is simply an observation of this unpleasant family that goes on and on in endless detail but never actually heads anywhere. The exception to this is the strand about the budding terrorist. Cut in at the end of chapters, this strand is told as a series of extracts from letters he sends to an unnamed person, possibly a lover – at the point I abandoned it we still don't know. Here we learn all about the lives of the rural poor, but from a distance – we never actually get to know any of the poor, just this angst-ridden middle-class Marxist's interpretation of them, liberally sprinkled with a regurgitation of Marxist theory – at great length.
The quality of the writing is fine – neither particularly bad nor good. Occasional passages are well written and there's no doubt he gives a very, very, very detailed picture of everything he describes (including lots and lots of abstruse mathematical theories – well, he obviously knew them, so why not put them in?). In my review of The Goldfinch, I quipped that Donna Tartt had obviously bought a couple of enormous economy sized bags of words and used them all – Mukherjee has obviously been to the same shop. I saw him being interviewed about the book on the BBC News channel and when asked about the length of the book he replied that he wanted the book to be 'densely rendered' (Good news! It is!) and that if people were paying £17 for the hardback he felt they should get their money's worth. Personally, I'd prefer to pay for quality rather than quantity. He also said that he thought even Indian people would find it hard to really understand the 'Bengali-ness' that he is apparently trying to portray – I guess therefore it's understandable that this Scot struggled to feel engaged.
The real flaw in the book though is that, out of this huge cast of characters, there isn't a single one who is likeable, engaging or even particularly interesting. The family on the whole dislike each other and that I did find understandable, since I disliked them all. We have bullying of children, animal cruelty, incest (or as good as), and sexual perversion of the most ridiculous kind about which it has been my misfortune to read. We have some members of the family being treated as second-class citizens within the home, sibling rivalry taken to extremes, obnoxious wives battling for domestic supremacy, servants being treated as badly as servants usually are, and beggars being turned away at the door to starve. Two weeks in this family and I'd have become a Marxist terrorist myself, I think.
I said it when I was reviewing Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance and I'll say it again – I do not believe that India is this unrelievedly awful. The problem with unmitigated misery is that it becomes numbing after a while – there has to be something to contrast it with if it's going to have an emotional impact. Or alternatively it has to be written so beautifully that the words themselves become the point. All of these people are so deeply unpleasant that this reader couldn't care less what happened to them. In fact, I was rather hoping for an alien invasion to brighten things up.
In truth, this probably deserves about three stars for the writing and descriptions but, since I found it such a dismal, tedious and ultimately pointless read that I couldn't bring myself to finish it, I feel I have no option but to put it in the 1-star slot. It's been shortlisted for the Booker, of course...
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Random House Vintage.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
April 7, 2019
This is such an ambitious family saga. The title "Lives of Others" could be interpreted in many ways by each actor in the big Ghosh family and therein lies it's achievement. The book also gives a spectacular perspective on the Naxalite movement and the CPI(M) politics that has made West Bengal what it is - good or bad.
The Ghosh Household is an assortment of characters from a soap opera set in the 1967 Calcutta. In fact the opening chapter where we are introduced to each family within the family - Adi, Priyo, Bhola, Chhaya and Purba along with the patriarch - is straight out of a movie where the introductions are pivoted around one dialogue at a point of time. The household has the petty saas-bahu drama, pecking order among the brothers, jealousy and secrets. We also read the eldest third generation member Supratik's account from the villages where he has joined the Naxal movement which, to me, was detailed and brilliant.
The chapters are anachronistic, squeezing in backstories and episodes that help understand the characters better. For example the tyranny of Priyo and Chhaya on Bhola which leads to his docile nature and Somnath's spoilt nature coming from being pampered by father. The goodness and badness of characters are exaggerated to befit a prime time soap opera. Some of the backstories stretched the book a bit and did not add any value. For example Priyo's perversion or Arunima's school essay don't lead anywhere and they just are left hanging. Also the hinted and often scandalous secrets did not add much to the narrative.
Neel Mukherjee is a man of details when it comes to writing. What was impressive was the amount of details he gets into for each story line. He gets into the world of prime numbers through Sona's genius, gets into the farming practice details during Supratik's stint and gets into the details of cooking children's treat when he talks of Madan. This revealed a lot about the meticulous research that went into it. Between the pages, the authors also slips in dark humor, ironies and connect the dot sort of anecdotes.
It could have done with some level of trimming and some additional coverage for the 'rest' of the characters.Good read.
The Ghosh Household is an assortment of characters from a soap opera set in the 1967 Calcutta. In fact the opening chapter where we are introduced to each family within the family - Adi, Priyo, Bhola, Chhaya and Purba along with the patriarch - is straight out of a movie where the introductions are pivoted around one dialogue at a point of time. The household has the petty saas-bahu drama, pecking order among the brothers, jealousy and secrets. We also read the eldest third generation member Supratik's account from the villages where he has joined the Naxal movement which, to me, was detailed and brilliant.
The chapters are anachronistic, squeezing in backstories and episodes that help understand the characters better. For example the tyranny of Priyo and Chhaya on Bhola which leads to his docile nature and Somnath's spoilt nature coming from being pampered by father. The goodness and badness of characters are exaggerated to befit a prime time soap opera. Some of the backstories stretched the book a bit and did not add any value. For example Priyo's perversion or Arunima's school essay don't lead anywhere and they just are left hanging. Also the hinted and often scandalous secrets did not add much to the narrative.
Neel Mukherjee is a man of details when it comes to writing. What was impressive was the amount of details he gets into for each story line. He gets into the world of prime numbers through Sona's genius, gets into the farming practice details during Supratik's stint and gets into the details of cooking children's treat when he talks of Madan. This revealed a lot about the meticulous research that went into it. Between the pages, the authors also slips in dark humor, ironies and connect the dot sort of anecdotes.
It could have done with some level of trimming and some additional coverage for the 'rest' of the characters.Good read.
October 29, 2018
Una saga in salsa curry
Tipica “Saga familiare” con tutti i difetti e i pregi insiti in questo tipo di operazione.
Dunque ci sono tre generazioni di Ghosh, famiglia alto borghese di Calcutta che, ad accentuare l’unità di luogo in cui si svolge una gran parte delle vicende del romanzo, convivono nel medesimo palazzo su tre piani. Tre piani che ricalcano la rigida gerarchia vigente all’interno del gruppo familiare col prevedibile corteo di invidie, rancori, risentimenti, maldicenze, tentativi di assicurarsi una fetta maggiore di un patrimonio che va via via esaurendosi man mano che le aziende di famiglia si assottigliano e perdono valore a causa di eventi esterni e investimenti sbagliati.
Unica variante a tale dinamica centripeta è la fuga del giovane più irrequieto di questa Dinasty bengalese, talmente esasperato dal soffocante clima egoista e materiale da affiliarsi addirittura alla guerriglia naxalita, movimento maoista operante soprattutto nelle zone in cui sfruttamento e usura prosperano incontrastati in un ambiente dissanguato dall’estrema miseria.
Tutto ciò va a riempire il numero eccessivo di pagine di “La vita degli altri”, con caratteri stereotipati e in parte sovrapponibili, nomi, soprannomi, prefissi che definiscono il rapporto familiare, al punto che in prefazione è collocato un albero genealogico in soccorso del lettore, manco si trattasse dei Tudor o dei Medici…
Sull’altro piatto della bilancia troviamo un efficace quadro della società bengalese, in particolare negli anni ’60-‘70 in cui gli eventi hanno luogo, redatto da un autore nativo di Calcutta, che quindi conosce bene di cosa parla e lo descrive con particolare attenzione al dettaglio ed alle ripercussioni sulla vita delle persone e sull’economia della società da parte degli avvenimenti esterni, primo fra tutti la famosa “Partizione” (1971) fra Bengala Occidentale annesso all’India e Pakistan orientale, oggi Bangla Desh. Molta cura è dedicata anche agli usi e costumi, i cerimoniali indu religiosi e civili, i sari e i gioielli, i cibi e i profumi, tanto che sembra di sentirlo fra le pagine quell’aroma di essenze e spezie che si diffonde nell’aria chiusa del palazzo, del giardino e del cortile, orgogliosamente chiusi alle intromissioni del mondo esterno e dell’umanità miserabile che vi si accalca.
Ma l’accuratissima ricostruzione d’ambiente appare troppo spesso esaurirsi in sé stessa, nel respiro corto di azioni e reazioni prevedibili e dialoghi monocordi, in assenza pressoché assoluta di veri colpi di scena e lasciando quindi nel lettore un senso di partecipazione distaccata.
Tipica “Saga familiare” con tutti i difetti e i pregi insiti in questo tipo di operazione.
Dunque ci sono tre generazioni di Ghosh, famiglia alto borghese di Calcutta che, ad accentuare l’unità di luogo in cui si svolge una gran parte delle vicende del romanzo, convivono nel medesimo palazzo su tre piani. Tre piani che ricalcano la rigida gerarchia vigente all’interno del gruppo familiare col prevedibile corteo di invidie, rancori, risentimenti, maldicenze, tentativi di assicurarsi una fetta maggiore di un patrimonio che va via via esaurendosi man mano che le aziende di famiglia si assottigliano e perdono valore a causa di eventi esterni e investimenti sbagliati.
Unica variante a tale dinamica centripeta è la fuga del giovane più irrequieto di questa Dinasty bengalese, talmente esasperato dal soffocante clima egoista e materiale da affiliarsi addirittura alla guerriglia naxalita, movimento maoista operante soprattutto nelle zone in cui sfruttamento e usura prosperano incontrastati in un ambiente dissanguato dall’estrema miseria.
Tutto ciò va a riempire il numero eccessivo di pagine di “La vita degli altri”, con caratteri stereotipati e in parte sovrapponibili, nomi, soprannomi, prefissi che definiscono il rapporto familiare, al punto che in prefazione è collocato un albero genealogico in soccorso del lettore, manco si trattasse dei Tudor o dei Medici…
Sull’altro piatto della bilancia troviamo un efficace quadro della società bengalese, in particolare negli anni ’60-‘70 in cui gli eventi hanno luogo, redatto da un autore nativo di Calcutta, che quindi conosce bene di cosa parla e lo descrive con particolare attenzione al dettaglio ed alle ripercussioni sulla vita delle persone e sull’economia della società da parte degli avvenimenti esterni, primo fra tutti la famosa “Partizione” (1971) fra Bengala Occidentale annesso all’India e Pakistan orientale, oggi Bangla Desh. Molta cura è dedicata anche agli usi e costumi, i cerimoniali indu religiosi e civili, i sari e i gioielli, i cibi e i profumi, tanto che sembra di sentirlo fra le pagine quell’aroma di essenze e spezie che si diffonde nell’aria chiusa del palazzo, del giardino e del cortile, orgogliosamente chiusi alle intromissioni del mondo esterno e dell’umanità miserabile che vi si accalca.
Ma l’accuratissima ricostruzione d’ambiente appare troppo spesso esaurirsi in sé stessa, nel respiro corto di azioni e reazioni prevedibili e dialoghi monocordi, in assenza pressoché assoluta di veri colpi di scena e lasciando quindi nel lettore un senso di partecipazione distaccata.
April 26, 2017
This is an impressively realised and ambitious novel on the social history of Bengal, contrasting the experiences of a decadent upper-middle class family struggling to maintain their opulent lifestyle despite a failing business, and those of their grandson, who leaves home in the late '60s for a life as a Maoist revolutionary mobilising poor and exploited rural peasants.
The narrative covers many different aspects of society and is full of colourful details. The main focus is on the corruption which keeps the vested interests in place and the powerlessness of the disenfranchised. It is also strong on family dynamics and has a rather odd subplot about a child who is a natural genius in pure mathematics.
A very moving book - highly recommended.
The narrative covers many different aspects of society and is full of colourful details. The main focus is on the corruption which keeps the vested interests in place and the powerlessness of the disenfranchised. It is also strong on family dynamics and has a rather odd subplot about a child who is a natural genius in pure mathematics.
A very moving book - highly recommended.
February 12, 2016
Good grief! How did this book end up in the Man Booker short list? This is merely a poor-man's version of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende.
Without exaggeration or prejudice I urge you to open the book at the midway point and begin your reading *there*. The first half of the novel is completely unnecessary and remarkably long. It is in the second half that Mukherjee shows his ability to compose lyrically crafted sentences, interesting action, and an unsoporific plot.
But is it worth plowing through the first portion to get to it? In my view, no.
Without exaggeration or prejudice I urge you to open the book at the midway point and begin your reading *there*. The first half of the novel is completely unnecessary and remarkably long. It is in the second half that Mukherjee shows his ability to compose lyrically crafted sentences, interesting action, and an unsoporific plot.
But is it worth plowing through the first portion to get to it? In my view, no.
November 25, 2015
Simply the question is why I have not awarded the book a handful three stars! And the answer is as simple as that that I am utterly disappointed. Why? Oh, let me think...
1. The book is as voluminous (505 pages!) as a mammoth. As you will read on, you'll feel that a dead mammoth's weight is upon your shoulder. It easily could have been cut in half of its present size if Neel had not used oxford-full of adjectives, long description, monotonous analysis behind almost each of the thoughts from each of the characters.
2. The subject matter is not at all unique. The political upheaval in the Calcutta during the 60s and 70s have already been the subject of numerous novels. Even few days back Jhupa Lahiri has also written the book 'The lowland' on the same topic. The fun is none of Jhumpa or Neel has the first hand experience or knowledge of that time. Both of them though have read articles, heard thrilling stories from others (say, from Asim 'Kaka' Chaterjee) but could not succeed to bring the warmth in the book.
3. This book is an encyclopaedia on farming, specially for paddy! But where is the description of the political turmoil that happened that time? The naxalite boy Supratik Ghosh described how to farm but did not care to inform his beloved 'kakima' (okay, don't panic he is in love with her) and us about the details of naxalite movement.
4. The characters in the Ghosh family ultimately reaches no where. They all were lost in the mist along with the writer. It seems Neel has described their mutual quarrels, illicit loves and other family things only to write up a heavy book. Thats all.
5. As the book is in english, it is expected that people other than bengali also will read it. With the aim to introduce the bengali culture to others, Neel has simply translated bengali proverbs, colloquial day-to-day usages in english. Examples are 'burnt forehead' (পোড়া কপাল), 'hide fishes with green'(শাক দিয়ে মাছ ঢাকা), 'you are burning me'(জ্বালিয়ে মারা), 'milking from the nose' (নাক টিপলে দুধ বেরোয়) etc. The translations are not only blunt but they are sick.
6. The fashion in which Somnath, the youngest son of the Ghosh family died is bound to remind you the characters Duli and Hari of the movie 'Days and nights of the forest' by Satyajit Ray. Neel had simply copied the movie-script and killed that character of lustful Somnath by few Santhals.
7. I have never read any epilogue that discusses prime numbers. It is as boring as hell. In fact I was forced to omit numerous paragraphs and pages in the last section to finish the book.
I can provide numerous other examples as above that brought disappointment in me. However, let me put a stop here.
Finally, in conclusion it must be said that no one should write books on 60s-70s Calcutta unless he or she has his/her own experience. I do not know how this book was long listed for Booker prize but it was justified to be rejected.
OH! NEEL YOU JUST KILLED THE THRILL OF THAT TIME. I AM SOOOOO DISAPPOINTED...
1. The book is as voluminous (505 pages!) as a mammoth. As you will read on, you'll feel that a dead mammoth's weight is upon your shoulder. It easily could have been cut in half of its present size if Neel had not used oxford-full of adjectives, long description, monotonous analysis behind almost each of the thoughts from each of the characters.
2. The subject matter is not at all unique. The political upheaval in the Calcutta during the 60s and 70s have already been the subject of numerous novels. Even few days back Jhupa Lahiri has also written the book 'The lowland' on the same topic. The fun is none of Jhumpa or Neel has the first hand experience or knowledge of that time. Both of them though have read articles, heard thrilling stories from others (say, from Asim 'Kaka' Chaterjee) but could not succeed to bring the warmth in the book.
3. This book is an encyclopaedia on farming, specially for paddy! But where is the description of the political turmoil that happened that time? The naxalite boy Supratik Ghosh described how to farm but did not care to inform his beloved 'kakima' (okay, don't panic he is in love with her) and us about the details of naxalite movement.
4. The characters in the Ghosh family ultimately reaches no where. They all were lost in the mist along with the writer. It seems Neel has described their mutual quarrels, illicit loves and other family things only to write up a heavy book. Thats all.
5. As the book is in english, it is expected that people other than bengali also will read it. With the aim to introduce the bengali culture to others, Neel has simply translated bengali proverbs, colloquial day-to-day usages in english. Examples are 'burnt forehead' (পোড়া কপাল), 'hide fishes with green'(শাক দিয়ে মাছ ঢাকা), 'you are burning me'(জ্বালিয়ে মারা), 'milking from the nose' (নাক টিপলে দুধ বেরোয়) etc. The translations are not only blunt but they are sick.
6. The fashion in which Somnath, the youngest son of the Ghosh family died is bound to remind you the characters Duli and Hari of the movie 'Days and nights of the forest' by Satyajit Ray. Neel had simply copied the movie-script and killed that character of lustful Somnath by few Santhals.
7. I have never read any epilogue that discusses prime numbers. It is as boring as hell. In fact I was forced to omit numerous paragraphs and pages in the last section to finish the book.
I can provide numerous other examples as above that brought disappointment in me. However, let me put a stop here.
Finally, in conclusion it must be said that no one should write books on 60s-70s Calcutta unless he or she has his/her own experience. I do not know how this book was long listed for Booker prize but it was justified to be rejected.
OH! NEEL YOU JUST KILLED THE THRILL OF THAT TIME. I AM SOOOOO DISAPPOINTED...
August 6, 2014
Hmmmm...I have mixed feelings about this book. As much as I enjoyed the writing and the family saga, there so many things I had a problem with. Most notable no one in this book is particularly likeable. Especially Supratik..I just couldn't get myself to care about his journey and his politics and ideology.
November 9, 2015
"From what you've told me about what's going on at home, we have living proof of Marx's theories. You take away economic security and the whole pack of cards collapses. Everyone is at each other's throats. All these vaunted bourgeois values that prop up society - love, duty, honour, respect - all rest on power relations lubricated by economics."
The final book from the Booker shortlist (and my final verdict on that below) sees Neel Mukherjee tell the story of the Ghosh family, headed by the patriarch Prafullanath with his wife, 5 children (one dead), 4 daughters-in-law, 6 grandchildren and their domestic servants.
The book is set in the late 60s and early 70s, as the once successful paper business built by Prafullanath starts to fall on hard times, and, as the quote above neatly summarises, the family starts to fall apart. And in the wider Bengali society, the Naxalite revolution is in full swing, and spreading across the Santhal tribes and rural areas, but also increasingly dragging in middle class city-dwelling idealists, including the family's eldest grandson, Supratik. As a Calcutta policeman complains "Not a day passes when there isn't a bomb thrown
at us by these good middle-class fish-and-rice fed boys who have turned terrorist."
The story is told in three interwoven strands with, one set of chapters in the late 60s/70s and told in the present tense, the 2nd filling in the family's back story and written in the past tense, and the 3rd in the form of lengthy undelivered letters from Supratik describing his adventures as an activist (the intended recipient only becomes clear as the novel progresses). The switching between present and past tenses jars a little at first, and doesn't always seem 100% consistent, but ultimately does work. Mukherjee's debut novel was called "Past Continuous" and there's a nod to both that, and the use of tense in this novel, when Sona, the maths prodigy amongst the grandchildren bemoans the state of English teaching in his government school: "English, his weakest subject; the flimsiest subject in school, in fact, for the English teacher in Khastagir hardly knows how to transpose a sentence from the simple present tense to, say, the past continuous."
I said in the previous paragraph that it is Sona who bemoans this, but in fact it is the narrator on Sona's behalf, and this highlights the first weakness with the novel. The narrative chapters feature the point of view of multiple characters, but mostly only one omniscient narrative voice, so that reader doesn't really feel that they are entering into each characters' thoughts.
Mukherjee also doesn't make the book particularly easy on the reader. There's a family tree of the key characters at the start, which at first seems surprisingly small given the seemingly large cast. Then you realise that most family members have nicknames, and are also referred to, as Bengali's would, relationally rather than by name, and Bengali relationship vocabulary is considerably more complicated than English.
So opening the book at a random page (p42 in my edition), we find the granddaughter Baishakhi "knowing well that there will be a possessive rush to grab the puja special autumn issue
of Ultorath between Ma, Pishi, Boro-kaki and herself".
A glance at the family table doesn't help at all. So we instead turn to the end pages where we find a helpful explanation of Bengali relationship-terms: Mama turns out to be one's maternal uncle. Pishi is the speaker's father's sister. Kaka (sic, not Kaki) is the younger brother of one's father, and Boro- is a prefix meaning eldest.
So turning all the way back to the family tree, the reader finds that: Baishakhi's maternal relatives aren't included in the story at all - so "Ma" presumably means her mother, Purnima. Her father has only one sister, so Pishi is Chhaya. And her father has two younger brothers, so the Boro- prefix identifies Boro-Kaki as the elder, Bholonath.
With that confusion resolved the reader can finally move on to the rest of the paragraph - where he discovers the identity of these particular characters is actually irrelevant!
A little later, Arunmina refers to her Mejo-Jyethi. So back to the end pages and we see that Mejo- is a prefix meaning middle and Jyethi is an abbreviation for Jyethima, the wife of your Jyethu. Jyethu is the older brother of your father. So that must be her father's 2nd eldest brother's wife - Purnima – who was referred to by name in the previous sentence, which rather begs the question of why use the different title in this one.
I'd like to say that this becomes easier as the novel progresses but instead, the reader ends up simply letting it, and the frequent use of Bengali words (again there is a helpful glossary at the back - but unfortunately not comprehensive) pass without always working out exactly who or what is meant.
I'm all for authenticity, and I realise this is how Bengalis would address one another (and my second language, Korean, is very similar). But Mukherjee seems to use it gratuitously. The only time I noticed it being used for literary effect is towards the end of the novel, a revealing moment when Supratik realises he has started to think of his widowed aunt Purba, by her name, rather than as his Chotto-kakima.
As a final adverse point, the book is at times, it has to be said, rather boring. Mukherjee has tried to cram too much background detail in, and during these more technical sections, Mukherjee's prose becomes very flat. For example, the Ghosh's paper business is covered in too much detail, with lengthy discussions business strategy over the previous 30 years, complete the detailed production figures. Sentences like "The Bali factory had produced, at its peak functioning capacity, before all the troubles hit, 125TPD and had formed three-fifths of the Ghosh's business" don't exactly pique the reader's interest. Another chapter is devoted to number theory including mathematical proofs - even as a mathematician myself,
there was simply too much detail.
Mukherjee's writing can be lyrical - for example in the following passage on a Santhal forest - but this shows only in occasional bright patches of description, and at times he seems to borrow too liberally from the poems and songs of the Nobel-winning Rabindranath Tagore.
"Beyond another field on the other side, the forest lay like a dark-green, almost black shawl, extending from the dissolving hill in the distance. It appeared to be a repository of condensed dark, the vessel from which evening and night leaked out at a certain hour and covered the land and sky. Once inside, the darkness proved to be a trick that the forest - assuming its magical incarnation, like its companion, the hill, which was trying to become invisible - habitually performed for everyone outside its boundaries. The light, so flat out in the open, became dramatic and mobile: it seemed to have somersaulted up high to form a canopy. The hide-and-seek light, the unending series of sal, a whole different world hidden so openly within the shell of the soiled one they knew - all these things the city boys had never experienced before - silenced even Somnath".
The forest passage, of which the above is only an excerpt, comes towards the end of the novel and plays an important role. The description comes as seen by the youngest son, Somnath, while on a trip with friends, but the forest forms a more sinister aspect first as the trip ends in a tragedy, foreshadowed before one even stars the book in the family tree, and later, in time, as the hiding place of the Naxalite revolutionaries.
And on the positive side, the Naxalite episode is handled well, because of the focus on the individual experience of Supratik, and here we do get his authentic voice. Mukherjee for once resists the temptation to smother the reader in too much background details, despite the rich source material such as the many variants of Indian communism, the battles between the CPI(M) and the CPI(M-L), somewhat reminiscent of the Judean nationalists in Life of Brian. Overall I felt this part of the novel was superior to the treatment in Jhumpra Lahiri's "Lowland", which was on the 2013 Booker shortlist.
And Mukherjee does create some memorably drawn, and spectacularly flawed, characters, particularly in the womenfolk. For example, the Miss-Havisham like spinster-daughter Chhaya, heavily made-up and bejewelled, pining for a wedding she never had. Indeed one gets the impression Chhaya would feel that Miss Havisham was very lucky that she at least had a suitor, albeit one that cheated and jilted her. And her Mejo-Boudi (if I'm using the glossary correctly) Purmina, obsessed with her, and her husband's and daughter's, status in the Ghosh family, obsessively comparing gifts of jewellery and saris with those given to her sisters-in-law and speculating obsessively on what further treasure lie hidden in the family bank vaults. The cruel irony is that given the Ghosh's financial predicament, much of the family jewellery has been moved to the bank's own vaults to service loans.
Overall, Live of Others is a worthwhile read and on balance worth its place on the shortlist. But any Booker listed book that discusses the partition of India, as this one does, will inevitably be compared to Rushdie's Booker of Bookers, and this isn't even close to the lyricism of Midnight's Children. Add in Mukherjee's own frequent reference to Tagore - and he has set himself rather high benchmarks, which he can't reach.
As for my overall verdict on the 2014 Booker shortlist - two books clearly stand out, "J" by Howard Jacobsen and Ali Smith's "How to be both". J is the slightly better book but Smith would get my nod as Jacobsen has an undeserved Booker under his best for The Finkler Question, the weakest book of the 2010 shortlist. Mukherjee's "Life of Others" and Flanagan's "The Narrow Road to the Deep North", in that order, are some way behind - both solid books, but nothing that hasn't been done before and better. Fowler's "We are all completely beside
ourselves" and Ferris's terrible "To rise again at a decent hour" shouldn't have even been close to the longlist: the only rationale I can see for their shortlisting is a not-so-subtle protest by the judges at having to include American novels.
The final book from the Booker shortlist (and my final verdict on that below) sees Neel Mukherjee tell the story of the Ghosh family, headed by the patriarch Prafullanath with his wife, 5 children (one dead), 4 daughters-in-law, 6 grandchildren and their domestic servants.
The book is set in the late 60s and early 70s, as the once successful paper business built by Prafullanath starts to fall on hard times, and, as the quote above neatly summarises, the family starts to fall apart. And in the wider Bengali society, the Naxalite revolution is in full swing, and spreading across the Santhal tribes and rural areas, but also increasingly dragging in middle class city-dwelling idealists, including the family's eldest grandson, Supratik. As a Calcutta policeman complains "Not a day passes when there isn't a bomb thrown
at us by these good middle-class fish-and-rice fed boys who have turned terrorist."
The story is told in three interwoven strands with, one set of chapters in the late 60s/70s and told in the present tense, the 2nd filling in the family's back story and written in the past tense, and the 3rd in the form of lengthy undelivered letters from Supratik describing his adventures as an activist (the intended recipient only becomes clear as the novel progresses). The switching between present and past tenses jars a little at first, and doesn't always seem 100% consistent, but ultimately does work. Mukherjee's debut novel was called "Past Continuous" and there's a nod to both that, and the use of tense in this novel, when Sona, the maths prodigy amongst the grandchildren bemoans the state of English teaching in his government school: "English, his weakest subject; the flimsiest subject in school, in fact, for the English teacher in Khastagir hardly knows how to transpose a sentence from the simple present tense to, say, the past continuous."
I said in the previous paragraph that it is Sona who bemoans this, but in fact it is the narrator on Sona's behalf, and this highlights the first weakness with the novel. The narrative chapters feature the point of view of multiple characters, but mostly only one omniscient narrative voice, so that reader doesn't really feel that they are entering into each characters' thoughts.
Mukherjee also doesn't make the book particularly easy on the reader. There's a family tree of the key characters at the start, which at first seems surprisingly small given the seemingly large cast. Then you realise that most family members have nicknames, and are also referred to, as Bengali's would, relationally rather than by name, and Bengali relationship vocabulary is considerably more complicated than English.
So opening the book at a random page (p42 in my edition), we find the granddaughter Baishakhi "knowing well that there will be a possessive rush to grab the puja special autumn issue
of Ultorath between Ma, Pishi, Boro-kaki and herself".
A glance at the family table doesn't help at all. So we instead turn to the end pages where we find a helpful explanation of Bengali relationship-terms: Mama turns out to be one's maternal uncle. Pishi is the speaker's father's sister. Kaka (sic, not Kaki) is the younger brother of one's father, and Boro- is a prefix meaning eldest.
So turning all the way back to the family tree, the reader finds that: Baishakhi's maternal relatives aren't included in the story at all - so "Ma" presumably means her mother, Purnima. Her father has only one sister, so Pishi is Chhaya. And her father has two younger brothers, so the Boro- prefix identifies Boro-Kaki as the elder, Bholonath.
With that confusion resolved the reader can finally move on to the rest of the paragraph - where he discovers the identity of these particular characters is actually irrelevant!
A little later, Arunmina refers to her Mejo-Jyethi. So back to the end pages and we see that Mejo- is a prefix meaning middle and Jyethi is an abbreviation for Jyethima, the wife of your Jyethu. Jyethu is the older brother of your father. So that must be her father's 2nd eldest brother's wife - Purnima – who was referred to by name in the previous sentence, which rather begs the question of why use the different title in this one.
I'd like to say that this becomes easier as the novel progresses but instead, the reader ends up simply letting it, and the frequent use of Bengali words (again there is a helpful glossary at the back - but unfortunately not comprehensive) pass without always working out exactly who or what is meant.
I'm all for authenticity, and I realise this is how Bengalis would address one another (and my second language, Korean, is very similar). But Mukherjee seems to use it gratuitously. The only time I noticed it being used for literary effect is towards the end of the novel, a revealing moment when Supratik realises he has started to think of his widowed aunt Purba, by her name, rather than as his Chotto-kakima.
As a final adverse point, the book is at times, it has to be said, rather boring. Mukherjee has tried to cram too much background detail in, and during these more technical sections, Mukherjee's prose becomes very flat. For example, the Ghosh's paper business is covered in too much detail, with lengthy discussions business strategy over the previous 30 years, complete the detailed production figures. Sentences like "The Bali factory had produced, at its peak functioning capacity, before all the troubles hit, 125TPD and had formed three-fifths of the Ghosh's business" don't exactly pique the reader's interest. Another chapter is devoted to number theory including mathematical proofs - even as a mathematician myself,
there was simply too much detail.
Mukherjee's writing can be lyrical - for example in the following passage on a Santhal forest - but this shows only in occasional bright patches of description, and at times he seems to borrow too liberally from the poems and songs of the Nobel-winning Rabindranath Tagore.
"Beyond another field on the other side, the forest lay like a dark-green, almost black shawl, extending from the dissolving hill in the distance. It appeared to be a repository of condensed dark, the vessel from which evening and night leaked out at a certain hour and covered the land and sky. Once inside, the darkness proved to be a trick that the forest - assuming its magical incarnation, like its companion, the hill, which was trying to become invisible - habitually performed for everyone outside its boundaries. The light, so flat out in the open, became dramatic and mobile: it seemed to have somersaulted up high to form a canopy. The hide-and-seek light, the unending series of sal, a whole different world hidden so openly within the shell of the soiled one they knew - all these things the city boys had never experienced before - silenced even Somnath".
The forest passage, of which the above is only an excerpt, comes towards the end of the novel and plays an important role. The description comes as seen by the youngest son, Somnath, while on a trip with friends, but the forest forms a more sinister aspect first as the trip ends in a tragedy, foreshadowed before one even stars the book in the family tree, and later, in time, as the hiding place of the Naxalite revolutionaries.
And on the positive side, the Naxalite episode is handled well, because of the focus on the individual experience of Supratik, and here we do get his authentic voice. Mukherjee for once resists the temptation to smother the reader in too much background details, despite the rich source material such as the many variants of Indian communism, the battles between the CPI(M) and the CPI(M-L), somewhat reminiscent of the Judean nationalists in Life of Brian. Overall I felt this part of the novel was superior to the treatment in Jhumpra Lahiri's "Lowland", which was on the 2013 Booker shortlist.
And Mukherjee does create some memorably drawn, and spectacularly flawed, characters, particularly in the womenfolk. For example, the Miss-Havisham like spinster-daughter Chhaya, heavily made-up and bejewelled, pining for a wedding she never had. Indeed one gets the impression Chhaya would feel that Miss Havisham was very lucky that she at least had a suitor, albeit one that cheated and jilted her. And her Mejo-Boudi (if I'm using the glossary correctly) Purmina, obsessed with her, and her husband's and daughter's, status in the Ghosh family, obsessively comparing gifts of jewellery and saris with those given to her sisters-in-law and speculating obsessively on what further treasure lie hidden in the family bank vaults. The cruel irony is that given the Ghosh's financial predicament, much of the family jewellery has been moved to the bank's own vaults to service loans.
Overall, Live of Others is a worthwhile read and on balance worth its place on the shortlist. But any Booker listed book that discusses the partition of India, as this one does, will inevitably be compared to Rushdie's Booker of Bookers, and this isn't even close to the lyricism of Midnight's Children. Add in Mukherjee's own frequent reference to Tagore - and he has set himself rather high benchmarks, which he can't reach.
As for my overall verdict on the 2014 Booker shortlist - two books clearly stand out, "J" by Howard Jacobsen and Ali Smith's "How to be both". J is the slightly better book but Smith would get my nod as Jacobsen has an undeserved Booker under his best for The Finkler Question, the weakest book of the 2010 shortlist. Mukherjee's "Life of Others" and Flanagan's "The Narrow Road to the Deep North", in that order, are some way behind - both solid books, but nothing that hasn't been done before and better. Fowler's "We are all completely beside
ourselves" and Ferris's terrible "To rise again at a decent hour" shouldn't have even been close to the longlist: the only rationale I can see for their shortlisting is a not-so-subtle protest by the judges at having to include American novels.
April 27, 2021
This was like hammer in face. A story spanning across three generations, in Calcutta of early 19th century to 1970's.
Right from the prologue, the tale is heart wrenching with a poor farmer killing off his family and committing suicide.
Most of the characters of the family had a grey shade to them.
There was drug and alcohol abuse, sexual perversions, incest, lustful exploitation of maid, and most importantly the thought process of an active Naxalite from the same family.
One character showed silver lining, with some great mathematical stuff, and demonstrated the contrast between two extreme characters seeding from the same family.
The narration was excellent alternating between first person letters, and third person view of various family members.
Overall: Recommended for a realistic and heart wrenching family saga.
Right from the prologue, the tale is heart wrenching with a poor farmer killing off his family and committing suicide.
Most of the characters of the family had a grey shade to them.
There was drug and alcohol abuse, sexual perversions, incest, lustful exploitation of maid, and most importantly the thought process of an active Naxalite from the same family.
One character showed silver lining, with some great mathematical stuff, and demonstrated the contrast between two extreme characters seeding from the same family.
The narration was excellent alternating between first person letters, and third person view of various family members.
Overall: Recommended for a realistic and heart wrenching family saga.
July 16, 2024
More like a 3.5, but I rounded down for the following reasons. How long it takes me to read a book is usually a good indication of how enthralling I found it. The LAST 500 page book I read (Michel Faber's new one) took me 2 days - this took me almost 2 weeks - and seemed an even longer slog! Beginning with a horrific murder/suicide and ending with a police torture/killing and ANOTHER suicide, Mukherjee's epic is an almost unrelenting, disgusting catalog of man's bleak inhumanity (including one character who takes sexual pleasure from being shat upon, and another who delights in torturing insects and animals). The odds-on favorite to win this year's Man Booker Prize, it eventually lost to the only more depressingly nihilistic nominee. Despite these misgivings, plus the overabundance of major characters that it is difficult to keep straight (17 in the Ghosh family alone), and an over-reliance on familiar, nay cliched tropes from South East Asian films and books (the big Bengali wedding, forbidden love between the castes, the theft of jewelry blamed on servants, internecine sibling rivalries, etc., etc.) I DID find the book to be well-written and ultimately worth reading. It just wasn't a very pleasant journey.
November 10, 2017
3,5
I like to read family sagas, and this one covers three generations of an Indian family living in Calcutta. The story goes back and forth, from the life of the grandfather to his children and grandchildren, but also his servant Madan. The years covered go from the early 19th century to the 70ies. The chapters dedicated to the family alternate with chapters written like letters by one of the grown-up grandchildren.
There isn't only the interesting historical background, from the British occupation to independence and to naxalism, but the reader gets also the way of life of a wealthy family but also that of poor families and the injustices they had to endure.
3,5 stars because I liked the first and last part of the book, but in the middle it was getting a little bit too dragging for me.
I like to read family sagas, and this one covers three generations of an Indian family living in Calcutta. The story goes back and forth, from the life of the grandfather to his children and grandchildren, but also his servant Madan. The years covered go from the early 19th century to the 70ies. The chapters dedicated to the family alternate with chapters written like letters by one of the grown-up grandchildren.
There isn't only the interesting historical background, from the British occupation to independence and to naxalism, but the reader gets also the way of life of a wealthy family but also that of poor families and the injustices they had to endure.
3,5 stars because I liked the first and last part of the book, but in the middle it was getting a little bit too dragging for me.
did-not-finish
January 3, 2017When this didn't win the Booker, I decided to return it to the library. Maybe I'll read it some day but it was not giving me a thrill.
October 29, 2022
I was was wavering between 4 and 5 stars… but I based my score on how much this book got better. I’m a newbie at reading e-books and did not see the glossary of terms for the family relations at the END of the book. This info would have been helpful if I had discovered it earlier!!!! But one of the things I liked about the book was that I was made to be an “other”, while trying to keep all the characters and relationships in my mind. But slowly everything/everyone started to meld in my brain and I felt like part of the family. I also learned A LOT of new words in this book!! 💕
July 4, 2014
It is not often that I find myself agreeing with each and every blurb of a book. And this one of those rare instances. There are so many ways to describe things happening to and around us, and how we and others react to them. "For what can be more interesting than the lives of others?" And this cannot be more true when it comes to a Bengali - that eternal creature of intrigue. Coupled with that, a Bengali business family faced with a crumbling empire. This was so common an instances in the decades spanning the sixties and seventies. Yet this is not a story that has been told very often by an Indian writer in English. And then of course is that ever looming presence of that spirit animal of so many Bengali families during that period of time - Naxalism. A spirit animal that every haunted them in the worst possible ways and manifested itself in their history for years to come. Neel Mukherjee's brutal description of this and more is why this book stands out. At the same time, there are comical descriptions of the nuances that permeate nearly every Bengali household since eternity. The helpings of rice and the spices used for a curry are those tiny details that so many of us Bengalis have ingrained in our psyche, even when we move away from our homes to distant shores. Sure, Mukherjee is not the first writer of Indian origin writing about Bengalis, in English. Giants like Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh and Jhumpa Lahiri have straddled this domain for a while. But while Ghosh has delved into realms of history and science and Lahiri has been the flag bearer of Bengali emigres, with Chaudhuri more or less mastering the art of short story telling, Mukherjee could probably be the first one, or among the first surely, bringing to the fore a more than comprehensive picture of the warps and wefts that make and bring down a Bangali bhadralok. The Lives of Others is something like a Ray movie - with a lot of subplots and branches of narration, unflinchingly yet honestly telling the tales we have heard but may not have read. At times this book may read like a translation of a Bengali story itself, for readers like me, yet it does not fail in its brilliance of keeping you engaged till the very last word.
September 11, 2014
If you like reading about intense poverty, harsh living, torture, the exploration of the mathematics of prime numbers, and capitalist vs Marxist theory (not to mention constantly flicking to the back of the book to search the glossary or make absolutely certain of the compound noun formations used in Indian familial nomenclature) - be sure not to miss this book.
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May 16, 2016Osadharon! Wonderful! Thank you for writing this.
What else can be better than knowing lives of others?
What else can be better than knowing lives of others?
April 6, 2017
In exploring “the hidden inner cogs and wheels of the lives of others,” the Indian novelist Neel Mukherjee has written a book about the troubled process of social change at its most extreme — and won himself the Man Booker Prize for 2014 in the process. “What could be more interesting than other people’s lives?” he asks. His answer approaches the outermost boundaries of human depravity.
In a traditional sense, the protagonist of The Lives of Others is Supravit Ghosh, a third-generation scion of a once immensely wealthy Calcutta family who spurns the pampered comforts of home to take up arms in the Naxalite uprising that has roiled portions of Eastern India for more than four decades. However, more broadly speaking, the central character is Supravit’s family, a squabbling collection of twenty people — three generations of Ghoshes and their loyal servants — crammed into the four stories of a mansion in South Calcutta. It is the decline and disintegration of this once-proud family during the violent years of the late 1960s and early 1970s that provides the energy throughout much of the novel.
Mukherjee’s insight about violent revolution emerges in high relief. As Supravit muses, “one thought became steadily inescapable: we could only poke the government into a kind of low-grade irritability, but never scale that up to something life-changing, something that would bring the system crashing down. All this hurling of bombs, burning of trams, headlines in newspapers — to what avail? The condition of the people remained unchanged. Life carried on as before, restored to its status quo, like the skin of water after the ripples from a thrown pebble have died away, as if the surface retained no memory of it.”
Supravit’s grandfather, the aging patriarch, cast off by his family from his rightful inheritance as co-owner of a jewelry empire, has built a second fortune in the paper industry, establishing his own dynasty on the other side of Calcutta. Like his grandson, the old man is seeking to foster a sort of social change, but through capitalism rather than revolution. However, now the days of Ghosh wealth and influence are fading as the many paper mills in the old man’s grip slip away, shut by labor unrest, a gathering Communist movement, and the loss of East Bengal to the newly independent state of Bangladesh.
The Lives of Others follows Supravit from childhood through his career as a Naxalite terrorist in a vivid, first-person account. Others in the family are the subject of narration by an intrusive third person who gains access to their innermost fears and fantasies.
Not a single individual in the household, old or young, escapes the impact of India’s turbulent history. The pressures impinging on the family tear away at the bonds between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and offspring. This is a deeply disturbing story. Virtually no one emerges likable. In fact, it’s difficult not to conclude that Mukherjee doesn’t like any of his characters. He seems most deeply committed to exposing their faults.
Though it’s not an enjoyable experience to read this novel, it’s rewarding nonetheless, for its knowing portrait of life in India at a crucial turning-point in its history.
In a traditional sense, the protagonist of The Lives of Others is Supravit Ghosh, a third-generation scion of a once immensely wealthy Calcutta family who spurns the pampered comforts of home to take up arms in the Naxalite uprising that has roiled portions of Eastern India for more than four decades. However, more broadly speaking, the central character is Supravit’s family, a squabbling collection of twenty people — three generations of Ghoshes and their loyal servants — crammed into the four stories of a mansion in South Calcutta. It is the decline and disintegration of this once-proud family during the violent years of the late 1960s and early 1970s that provides the energy throughout much of the novel.
Mukherjee’s insight about violent revolution emerges in high relief. As Supravit muses, “one thought became steadily inescapable: we could only poke the government into a kind of low-grade irritability, but never scale that up to something life-changing, something that would bring the system crashing down. All this hurling of bombs, burning of trams, headlines in newspapers — to what avail? The condition of the people remained unchanged. Life carried on as before, restored to its status quo, like the skin of water after the ripples from a thrown pebble have died away, as if the surface retained no memory of it.”
Supravit’s grandfather, the aging patriarch, cast off by his family from his rightful inheritance as co-owner of a jewelry empire, has built a second fortune in the paper industry, establishing his own dynasty on the other side of Calcutta. Like his grandson, the old man is seeking to foster a sort of social change, but through capitalism rather than revolution. However, now the days of Ghosh wealth and influence are fading as the many paper mills in the old man’s grip slip away, shut by labor unrest, a gathering Communist movement, and the loss of East Bengal to the newly independent state of Bangladesh.
The Lives of Others follows Supravit from childhood through his career as a Naxalite terrorist in a vivid, first-person account. Others in the family are the subject of narration by an intrusive third person who gains access to their innermost fears and fantasies.
Not a single individual in the household, old or young, escapes the impact of India’s turbulent history. The pressures impinging on the family tear away at the bonds between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and offspring. This is a deeply disturbing story. Virtually no one emerges likable. In fact, it’s difficult not to conclude that Mukherjee doesn’t like any of his characters. He seems most deeply committed to exposing their faults.
Though it’s not an enjoyable experience to read this novel, it’s rewarding nonetheless, for its knowing portrait of life in India at a crucial turning-point in its history.
July 29, 2015
Another saga encompassing the trials and tribulations of the 20th century India, who struggled to attain independence in the first half, and later on struggled to circumvent the innumerable problems of an independent, democratic republic who had to face dissent from within and without.
The saga revolves around the Ghosh family, composed of the selfmade patriot, his children, their families, and a few others whose lives closely revolve in their radius. There is neediness, pride, dissent, forbidden relationships, frank disobedience, and a lot more. There are a few bad apples, a few petty individuals, and mostly, ordinay people with a protege thrown in. One of the grandsons entangled himself with naxalism, and through him we get to know a lot about the sociopolitical situations in the 60"s. Through the women and children, we get to know the upper crust Bengali life and culture.
it was a very satisfying read which gave me a glimpse of the India which I wouldn't otherwise know.
The saga revolves around the Ghosh family, composed of the selfmade patriot, his children, their families, and a few others whose lives closely revolve in their radius. There is neediness, pride, dissent, forbidden relationships, frank disobedience, and a lot more. There are a few bad apples, a few petty individuals, and mostly, ordinay people with a protege thrown in. One of the grandsons entangled himself with naxalism, and through him we get to know a lot about the sociopolitical situations in the 60"s. Through the women and children, we get to know the upper crust Bengali life and culture.
it was a very satisfying read which gave me a glimpse of the India which I wouldn't otherwise know.
June 29, 2018
I can’t decide how much of my fascination with this book was due to its exoticism and my love of unknown languages and cultures and how much due to the writing itself, but all in all I enjoyed reading this long novel. Maybe enjoyed is the wrong word though. This was, after all, a book of small and large tragedies, in the domestic space as well as in public. At first, I was bored with the chapters narrated by Supratik and wondered why a writer who could so masterfully make you interested in the most trivial deeds and wishes of all the rest of the family would fail at motivating you to invest emotionally in his supposed protagonist. By the end, however, I reached the conclusion that this was a conscious act and a literary ploy. I can’t wait to see if the book club members agree with this idea.
November 24, 2014
I am relieved to have managed to reach the end of the book. It felt like a long book. I liked the parts set in Majgeria/Belpahari. I had very little knowledge about Naxalite work in the villages. I found this portion illuminating. Otherwise while the book touched upon many facets of life, I found the characters rather black and white. Actually except one white and a few grey characters, everyone seemed to be very black. All the bad qualities were heaped upon the Ghosh family in an unrelenting torrent. Still it is a good account of that time in history.
May 25, 2015
Why did they all think alike? Typical bourgeois brainwashed homogeneity? How else could this unvarying calculus about the worth of one's own kind measured against the lives of others have come about?
The Lives of Others is one of my favourite types of books: a multigenerational family saga set in an unfamiliar locale in which I can learn about how other people live; their social customs, food, clothing, education, etc. In this book, set in the late 60's, we meet the Ghoshes -- three generations of upper-middle class Bangladeshis -- who all live together in a four storey home on the south end of Calcutta. The patriarch -- starting with nothing but the self-confidence resulting from a privileged upbringing -- built a paper mill empire, and his five children and their families all occupy the family home he established; their status within the family fixed by which floor they are assigned to live on, what food they are served to eat, how many outfits they are bought for festivals, and a multitude of other cues that reinforce their standings daily. The attitudinal gaps between the generations quickly become apparent: the patriarch and matriarch believe in hard work and expect the rewards that will follow; the sons of the next generation understand that they are to join the family business, and since duty forces them to comply (even if they feel that they are suppressing their own dreams), they find subtle ways to rebel; and the third generation, long used to luxuries without effort, descends into decadence and degeneration. The exception is the oldest grandson, Supratik, whose inability to recognise how the family fortune was indeed earned leads him to become influenced by the Communists while at university, and growing disgusted by the extravagance and petty jealousies displayed at home, leaves to join the militant Naxalites:
Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own. Forgive me.
I was familiar with the Naxalite movement from last year's The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, so the diary segments from Supratik's time with them were fascinating to me: even though they carried out a radical and militant form of Communism (using bombings and targeted murders in an effort to spark a nation-wide revolution) that appalled me, the descriptions of the working life of the rural poor (and not just the back-breaking work and near starvation but their manipulation by the landowners and moneylenders) would lead anyone of a compassionate nature to want to make radical changes to Indian society. The politicians and police are at the service of whoever will bribe them the most, and as surely as if it were really written on the foreheads of the poor, no one is able to rise above their station; there truly is no connection between effort and reward, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And yet, author Neel Mukherjee doesn't lionize or mythologize the Naxalites here: every action has its consequences -- generally unfavourable, sometimes incredibly gruesome -- without changing the big picture. Even the family's long-serving cook Madan (from a very poor village but brought in when he was 10; now considered more family than servant) begs Supratik to begin his charity at home:
Boro-babu, the world does not change, you destroy yourself trying to change it, but it remains as it is. The world is very big and we are very small. Why cause people who love you to go through such misery because of it?
The Lives of Others is a very well written book, an epic full of fascinating details and interesting plotlines, all asking us to question the status quo; to indeed imagine the lives of others, to stretch empathy to the point where we stop bickering about who has more but wonder who needs more and how to give it. I will be interested to see how the Man Booker Prize judges weigh this rather traditional narrative against the more difficult volumes on their shortlist -- my instinct is that they're going to favour the inscrutable. Pity, that.
June 5, 2016
10 days with The Lives Of Others, a period of a glimpse into inhuman times via family saga. A family saga set between pre-independence Calcutta, plagued by colonialism, famine and the aftershocks of World War II, and the Calcutta of the 1960s, where students are embracing Marx, the Grateful Dead, and heroin.
A novel of unflinching power and emotional force, The Lives of Other by Neel Mukherjee introduces you to the Ghosh family, who have earned their name and fame by owning the Papermaking business. In the horrific prolog, in the year 1966 ,a laborer reeling from drought and fighting with death every day, slaughters his family and then intakes a deadly dose of insecticide. But what would a laborer dying of drought have from Ghosh's living in peace and comfort? The answer lies in the family scion Supratik, who leaves the comfort of home to live with landless peasants and displaces tribal folk, the "others" in the book.
The Lives of Others is split in two narrations, one narration from Supratik, who is writing letters to an anonymous person (you will get to know who it is by the end of the novel), describing his daily life living with ignored sect of the society, one of the key reasons why Naxalites were born. Through Supratik's letters, you understand how much the Maoists movement was going on during the time when India recently got it's independence but then went again into the slavery of foolish politicians.
The second narration is by a third party, which makes you stay with the Ghosh family, three generations living under one roof, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. Each set of member occupies the floor in the family according to their standing in the family. Rivalries among sister in laws, the implosion of the family business and dark secrets spilling out in the open, have reduced Ghosh's family name to an outcast in the society. Ambitious, rich and in-compassionate, The Lives of Others is a heartfelt novel, something you need to take into slowly and let it flow in your blood.
Shortlisted for 2014 Man Booker Prize, The Lives of Others deserves a Booker Prize according to me. The novel has everything, a political situation affecting the central system of a family. At one hand the family scion has run away to understand the situation of political turmoil in the country, on the other hand, the Ghosh family deals with a new crack in their lives almost every day. It's like living inside a tornado, never stopping, never resting. Brothers Adinath, Bholanath, Purab fighting for what is right and what is wrong in their business, dealing with repercussions of bad decisions their father, Prafullanath made. Somnath, the fourth brother who died while raping a tribal woman, has left repercussions for his widow to deal with. Treated like an outcast, she is confined to downstairs quarters in one corner with her kids. Chaya, the sister, time to time creates a ruckus in the home, putting out her frustration of not being married, thanks to being overqualified, dark-skinned and with a squint in the eye, something that cannot be ignored in the elite Bengali society. The third generation, some of them dealing with drugs and some of them converting into a mathematical prodigy, The Lives of Other has it all.
The Lives of Others is like a journey where you can devour into an unspoken time when Bengal was in turmoil thanks to political changes, twice Presidential rule, Naxalites burning everything for their voice to be heard and business closing down. Farmers committing suicide due to drought, villagers frolicking towards the city in search of food, water, and shelter. But in turn, left dying in the streets.
The Lives of Others is one of those books that will leave a deep impact on you. I have read my own share of books based on Naxalites, Hello Bastar by Rahul Pandita, Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, but nothing comes close to this scary yet beautiful account. The books is a bit tad long, 560+ pages, took me almost 10 days to finish, but it is all worth it.
Something that you should not miss!
A novel of unflinching power and emotional force, The Lives of Other by Neel Mukherjee introduces you to the Ghosh family, who have earned their name and fame by owning the Papermaking business. In the horrific prolog, in the year 1966 ,a laborer reeling from drought and fighting with death every day, slaughters his family and then intakes a deadly dose of insecticide. But what would a laborer dying of drought have from Ghosh's living in peace and comfort? The answer lies in the family scion Supratik, who leaves the comfort of home to live with landless peasants and displaces tribal folk, the "others" in the book.
The Lives of Others is split in two narrations, one narration from Supratik, who is writing letters to an anonymous person (you will get to know who it is by the end of the novel), describing his daily life living with ignored sect of the society, one of the key reasons why Naxalites were born. Through Supratik's letters, you understand how much the Maoists movement was going on during the time when India recently got it's independence but then went again into the slavery of foolish politicians.
The second narration is by a third party, which makes you stay with the Ghosh family, three generations living under one roof, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. Each set of member occupies the floor in the family according to their standing in the family. Rivalries among sister in laws, the implosion of the family business and dark secrets spilling out in the open, have reduced Ghosh's family name to an outcast in the society. Ambitious, rich and in-compassionate, The Lives of Others is a heartfelt novel, something you need to take into slowly and let it flow in your blood.
Shortlisted for 2014 Man Booker Prize, The Lives of Others deserves a Booker Prize according to me. The novel has everything, a political situation affecting the central system of a family. At one hand the family scion has run away to understand the situation of political turmoil in the country, on the other hand, the Ghosh family deals with a new crack in their lives almost every day. It's like living inside a tornado, never stopping, never resting. Brothers Adinath, Bholanath, Purab fighting for what is right and what is wrong in their business, dealing with repercussions of bad decisions their father, Prafullanath made. Somnath, the fourth brother who died while raping a tribal woman, has left repercussions for his widow to deal with. Treated like an outcast, she is confined to downstairs quarters in one corner with her kids. Chaya, the sister, time to time creates a ruckus in the home, putting out her frustration of not being married, thanks to being overqualified, dark-skinned and with a squint in the eye, something that cannot be ignored in the elite Bengali society. The third generation, some of them dealing with drugs and some of them converting into a mathematical prodigy, The Lives of Other has it all.
The Lives of Others is like a journey where you can devour into an unspoken time when Bengal was in turmoil thanks to political changes, twice Presidential rule, Naxalites burning everything for their voice to be heard and business closing down. Farmers committing suicide due to drought, villagers frolicking towards the city in search of food, water, and shelter. But in turn, left dying in the streets.
The Lives of Others is one of those books that will leave a deep impact on you. I have read my own share of books based on Naxalites, Hello Bastar by Rahul Pandita, Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, but nothing comes close to this scary yet beautiful account. The books is a bit tad long, 560+ pages, took me almost 10 days to finish, but it is all worth it.
Something that you should not miss!
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