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A State of Freedom
What happens when we attempt to exchange the life we are given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into?
A State of Freedom prises open the central, defining events of our century – displacement and migration – but not as you imagine them. Five characters, in very different circumstances, from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more.
Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives – formally daring, fierce but full of pity – delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
A State of Freedom prises open the central, defining events of our century – displacement and migration – but not as you imagine them. Five characters, in very different circumstances, from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more.
Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives – formally daring, fierce but full of pity – delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 2, 2018
305 people are currently reading
4797 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 340 reviews
January 19, 2018
Stories connected by both a common theme and recurring characters in some, five stories in total. He should us an India, where the wealthy can live down the block from the slums, though the slums are hidden behind a sea wall. Where people are trying to better their lives grabbing at chances for either themselves or their children. The second story is by far the easiest, at least emotionally to read. A young man return from America for a month with plans to write a regional cookbook of recipes from his Homeland. While there he makes friend with the cook, a woman who he find our PT after visiting her village, that cooks for multiple families sending most of the money home so that a nephew can go to college in America and better himself and his family.
The third is the hardest to read, a man finds a bear cub and decides to train it so that he can take it on the road and make money for his family and his brothers family. This is a graphic and abusive depiction of what it takes to make the bear obedient. I skimmed much of this, in fact almost put the book down but this man can write, his words so impactful and I continued on. The desperation of this man trying to do anything to make money, to rise above himself by whatever means was emotionally stirring. Things do not go as well as planned, but the man feels free on the road.
This author does not spare the reader, the utter hopelessness so many of these people feel. Food is a key theme, either the cooking of it where there is plenty, or the lack of it, the desperation to feed a family with no money no resources. Lack of education and wanting to better oneself, in one story a man who takes his wife to the hospital but cannot read feels a hopelessness that is searing when he cannot read the signs telling him where to go.
The last story is all one sentence and relates back to the first. This is a magnificent collection, albeit one that is hard emotionally to read. Yet, so often these are the stories that stick with the reader, make the greatest impression. For me, this one did and will.
ARC from Edelweiss.
The third is the hardest to read, a man finds a bear cub and decides to train it so that he can take it on the road and make money for his family and his brothers family. This is a graphic and abusive depiction of what it takes to make the bear obedient. I skimmed much of this, in fact almost put the book down but this man can write, his words so impactful and I continued on. The desperation of this man trying to do anything to make money, to rise above himself by whatever means was emotionally stirring. Things do not go as well as planned, but the man feels free on the road.
This author does not spare the reader, the utter hopelessness so many of these people feel. Food is a key theme, either the cooking of it where there is plenty, or the lack of it, the desperation to feed a family with no money no resources. Lack of education and wanting to better oneself, in one story a man who takes his wife to the hospital but cannot read feels a hopelessness that is searing when he cannot read the signs telling him where to go.
The last story is all one sentence and relates back to the first. This is a magnificent collection, albeit one that is hard emotionally to read. Yet, so often these are the stories that stick with the reader, make the greatest impression. For me, this one did and will.
ARC from Edelweiss.
September 25, 2018
I don't know why it took me so long to get round to reading this one. My expectations were very high after the brilliant The Lives of Others, and this follow up did not disappoint.
This book is mostly about the poor and disenfranchised in contemporary India's divided society. The book consists of 5 loosely linked stories - the first and last being very short.
The second part links the rest together - a rich emigre returns to Mumbai to visit his parents, and becomes interested in the lives of their two servants, mostly the cook Renu but also the maid Milly, whose story the subject of the fourth part, and the only one that ends well. The third part tells of a poor villager who finds a baby bear and resolves to train it and use it to make his fortune - needless to say this does not go to plan.
Mukherjee has an instinctive sympathy for the downtrodden, and the book is a pleasure to read.
This book is mostly about the poor and disenfranchised in contemporary India's divided society. The book consists of 5 loosely linked stories - the first and last being very short.
The second part links the rest together - a rich emigre returns to Mumbai to visit his parents, and becomes interested in the lives of their two servants, mostly the cook Renu but also the maid Milly, whose story the subject of the fourth part, and the only one that ends well. The third part tells of a poor villager who finds a baby bear and resolves to train it and use it to make his fortune - needless to say this does not go to plan.
Mukherjee has an instinctive sympathy for the downtrodden, and the book is a pleasure to read.
July 29, 2017
I began reading this novel last week when a Guardian review tipped it as a Booker Prize contender. In the end it didn't make a fiercely competitive longlist and I can kind of see why. But in spite of some minor flaws, there is a lot to like about it.
The book is a collection of five interconnected tales, all set in present day India. In the first, a US-based lecturer returns to his homeland with his six-year-old son and experiences a growing sense of unease as they explore various tourist attractions. The next story focuses on a London publisher who spends time with his parents in Bombay every year. He becomes friendly with the family servants and takes up an invitation to visit one of their homes, but soon begins to regret this decision. The middle story is the longest and it tells of a abusive man's attempts to train a bear cub to dance, in order to perform on the streets for money. The fourth tale examines the fortunes of two young girls in a remote village, who end up taking very different paths. And the last section is a short stream of consciousness from a troubled construction worker.
What is striking about all of the stories is the presence of extreme poverty. Many of these characters live in filthy, overcrowded slums and struggle to simply stay alive. Food has a big part to play in the book: the middle class are preoccupied with deciding what their underpaid cooks will prepare for their dinner, while the poorer families constantly worry about where their next meal will come from. The impoverished adults take on several jobs and their daughters abandon school early in life to work as maids in big houses. It all paints a very divided picture of modern India.
I felt like I had read first story before, and the last one didn't work for me - it seemed tacked on and unfinished. But the middle three sections were undoubtedly compelling: they depict the resilience of some fascinating characters and their attempts to make a life for themselves in the face of overwhelming adversity. In these unflinching tales, Neel Mukherjee displays a deep understanding of the inequality and exploitation of Indian society. When it shines, A State of Freedom is a powerful and vivid portrait of a complicated country.
The book is a collection of five interconnected tales, all set in present day India. In the first, a US-based lecturer returns to his homeland with his six-year-old son and experiences a growing sense of unease as they explore various tourist attractions. The next story focuses on a London publisher who spends time with his parents in Bombay every year. He becomes friendly with the family servants and takes up an invitation to visit one of their homes, but soon begins to regret this decision. The middle story is the longest and it tells of a abusive man's attempts to train a bear cub to dance, in order to perform on the streets for money. The fourth tale examines the fortunes of two young girls in a remote village, who end up taking very different paths. And the last section is a short stream of consciousness from a troubled construction worker.
What is striking about all of the stories is the presence of extreme poverty. Many of these characters live in filthy, overcrowded slums and struggle to simply stay alive. Food has a big part to play in the book: the middle class are preoccupied with deciding what their underpaid cooks will prepare for their dinner, while the poorer families constantly worry about where their next meal will come from. The impoverished adults take on several jobs and their daughters abandon school early in life to work as maids in big houses. It all paints a very divided picture of modern India.
I felt like I had read first story before, and the last one didn't work for me - it seemed tacked on and unfinished. But the middle three sections were undoubtedly compelling: they depict the resilience of some fascinating characters and their attempts to make a life for themselves in the face of overwhelming adversity. In these unflinching tales, Neel Mukherjee displays a deep understanding of the inequality and exploitation of Indian society. When it shines, A State of Freedom is a powerful and vivid portrait of a complicated country.
July 15, 2017
Neel Mukherjee may have narrowly missed out on winning the Booker Prize when his previous novel “The Lives of Others” was shortlisted in 2014, but someone ought to give this writer a crown just for writing such impactful openings in his novels. In both that book and his new novel “A State of Freedom” I was moved, surprised and totally gripped after reading the first twenty or thirty pages. The vignettes which open these novels are separate from the main plots but have the ability to capture a reader’s attention and emotionally set the tone for what’s to come. In the case of this new novel, we meet a man who returns to India after living in America for a long time with his son in tow. On their travels to tourist sites he has a conflicted sense of identity seeing his native country through Western eyes. He has feelings of guilt mixed with anxiety and disgust. Then something so surprising and eerie occurs that I became hooked. The novel goes on to describe the lives of a few different individuals whose stories connect in fascinating ways. It’s a sweeping story that makes a complex but highly readable portrait of the state of modern India, economic inequality, classism and national identity.
Read my full review of A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee on LonesomeReader
October 24, 2022
They look out of the bus window and what the hell is that a guy with a bear on a chain? Where? Can’t see anymore. Well, it looked like a guy with a bear on a chain.
Yes, it was…. And his story is the third of these five interlinked-kind-of (see above) sorry tales of modern India. The guy with the bear is from a drastically poor village, one day he just finds a bear cub
The trembling, blinking creature is slightly larger and weightier than a fat dog
and a lightbulb goes off in his dim, cruel mind – this could be a money-making proposition. You know, a dancing bear. So begins the most upsetting, horrific 75 pages I read so far this year. This bear is the most memorable character in the whole book.
The other main story (100 pages long) is about Milly, a poor girl from the village, and her grim progress through her allotted trail of miseries. She never quite comes to life as a character, but I thought well, that’s appropriate, since the iron fist of Indian poverty never allows her to come to life in her own life, so to speak.
So yes, this is another 260 pages of unhappiness for you. Does anyone smile on any of these pages? Well, some of them laugh at the bear.
March 16, 2024
“After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.”
“Something about the urgency of the swarming and the indescribable sound that emanated from that swiftly engorging clot of people, a tense noise between buzzing and truculent murmuring, instantly transmitted the message that a disaster had occurred. Otherwise how else would the child have known to ask, ‘Baba, people running, look. What’s happening there?’ And how else could the driver have answered, mercifully in Hindi, ‘A man’s just fallen from the top of that building under construction. A labourer. Instant death, poor man.”
This is the first novel I have read by Mukherjee. It is a set of what seem like short stories, but they are all linked. Some of the minor players early on have their backstories explored later. This does lead towards some disjointedness. It is also a bit of a “state of the nation” novel as well. There are also echoes of a certain V S Naipaul here as well (remember In a Free State). Displacement and migration have a role to play. This linking of disparate lives also reminded me of Dickens. Class, stratification and inequality are also significant. This is a pretty grim portrait of India. There is an interesting passage relating to a son of a middle class family who is visiting from Britain looking for someone in a slum:
“People were now looking at me. My discomfort escalated and it was not only because of the stares. Edicts from a middle-class upbringing on looking into other people’s lives through their open doors and windows combined with a liberal sensitivity, acquired later in life, about treating the poor as anthropological fieldwork or a tourist attraction, to produce a mixture of dread, guilt and self-loathing.”
The later tales are, if anything even bleaker and the grim and grinding nature of poverty take centre stage. Watch out for the Naipaul link in the fourth story (the incident with the cupboard). All this is possibly even more hopeless than Naipaul, who, for me, overshadows this too much and Naipaul’s infamous quote “Hate oppression, fear the oppressed” is writ large.
Here the only way out is to leave: the UK in one instance, Germany in another. Even the Maoists who might provide a way out, end up being another trap. Lives are heavily circumscribed. Personally I found the middle tale, the story of the training of a performing bear difficult to read. Sadly, I have to report, the bear didn’t eat its rather cruel owner.
Movement and migration take centre stage as well: not just to Europe or the US, but within India, to big cities, even into the jungle to join the guerrillas. Mukherjee has obviously been a part of that movement himself and there is a sense of being uprooted and looking back to a different way of life.
The whole is awkward in parts and its analysis is bleak. Freedom is generally achieved away from home and with dislocation comes trauma. There is no humour or conviviality and cruelty is ever present. There are plenty of critiques here, many of which I am sure hit home, but it does feel like that the only person in a state of freedom here is the writer, over in the UK.
“Something about the urgency of the swarming and the indescribable sound that emanated from that swiftly engorging clot of people, a tense noise between buzzing and truculent murmuring, instantly transmitted the message that a disaster had occurred. Otherwise how else would the child have known to ask, ‘Baba, people running, look. What’s happening there?’ And how else could the driver have answered, mercifully in Hindi, ‘A man’s just fallen from the top of that building under construction. A labourer. Instant death, poor man.”
This is the first novel I have read by Mukherjee. It is a set of what seem like short stories, but they are all linked. Some of the minor players early on have their backstories explored later. This does lead towards some disjointedness. It is also a bit of a “state of the nation” novel as well. There are also echoes of a certain V S Naipaul here as well (remember In a Free State). Displacement and migration have a role to play. This linking of disparate lives also reminded me of Dickens. Class, stratification and inequality are also significant. This is a pretty grim portrait of India. There is an interesting passage relating to a son of a middle class family who is visiting from Britain looking for someone in a slum:
“People were now looking at me. My discomfort escalated and it was not only because of the stares. Edicts from a middle-class upbringing on looking into other people’s lives through their open doors and windows combined with a liberal sensitivity, acquired later in life, about treating the poor as anthropological fieldwork or a tourist attraction, to produce a mixture of dread, guilt and self-loathing.”
The later tales are, if anything even bleaker and the grim and grinding nature of poverty take centre stage. Watch out for the Naipaul link in the fourth story (the incident with the cupboard). All this is possibly even more hopeless than Naipaul, who, for me, overshadows this too much and Naipaul’s infamous quote “Hate oppression, fear the oppressed” is writ large.
Here the only way out is to leave: the UK in one instance, Germany in another. Even the Maoists who might provide a way out, end up being another trap. Lives are heavily circumscribed. Personally I found the middle tale, the story of the training of a performing bear difficult to read. Sadly, I have to report, the bear didn’t eat its rather cruel owner.
Movement and migration take centre stage as well: not just to Europe or the US, but within India, to big cities, even into the jungle to join the guerrillas. Mukherjee has obviously been a part of that movement himself and there is a sense of being uprooted and looking back to a different way of life.
The whole is awkward in parts and its analysis is bleak. Freedom is generally achieved away from home and with dislocation comes trauma. There is no humour or conviviality and cruelty is ever present. There are plenty of critiques here, many of which I am sure hit home, but it does feel like that the only person in a state of freedom here is the writer, over in the UK.
January 1, 2018
This book reads more like five novellas or short stories rather than a novel, although I did spot a few connections between stories (at least one between #2 and #4.)
The fifth story is all one sentence.
The fourth story is multiple sections following young girls from rural areas. One, the primary character, is forced to leave home and school at age 8 to contribute to the income of her family, and endures endless hardship. Her childhood best friend follows another route by becoming a revolutionary, it looks like with the Naxalites/Communists.
The third story is a poor man who decides to try making money with a dancing bear. If you can't tolerate animal cruelty, I would skip this one. But to be fair, the other stories include cruelty toward humans, and I'm not sure why that should bother anyone less.
In the second story, an educated son comes home and tries to learn about the disenfranchised members living on the outskirts of his community. It does not go well, although you can tell he means well.
In the first story, a father takes his son to tourist attractions with devastating consequences. I was a bit confused at the end of this one, not realizing there were separate stories going on. I went back and read it again before writing this review. undocumented, border dwelling populations in abject poverty, because they deserve voices too. And many of the stories are rural instead of set in the bigger cities.
Over all, I appreciated the focus on the
Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to this title through Edelweiss. It comes out in the USA on January 2, 2018.
The fifth story is all one sentence.
The fourth story is multiple sections following young girls from rural areas. One, the primary character, is forced to leave home and school at age 8 to contribute to the income of her family, and endures endless hardship. Her childhood best friend follows another route by becoming a revolutionary, it looks like with the Naxalites/Communists.
The third story is a poor man who decides to try making money with a dancing bear. If you can't tolerate animal cruelty, I would skip this one. But to be fair, the other stories include cruelty toward humans, and I'm not sure why that should bother anyone less.
In the second story, an educated son comes home and tries to learn about the disenfranchised members living on the outskirts of his community. It does not go well, although you can tell he means well.
In the first story, a father takes his son to tourist attractions with devastating consequences. I was a bit confused at the end of this one, not realizing there were separate stories going on. I went back and read it again before writing this review. undocumented, border dwelling populations in abject poverty, because they deserve voices too. And many of the stories are rural instead of set in the bigger cities.
Over all, I appreciated the focus on the
Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to this title through Edelweiss. It comes out in the USA on January 2, 2018.
December 20, 2017
As I was reading the last pages of this uncomfortable and upsetting novel, my eyes were streaming. My grief was overwhelming.
What story set in India is easy to read? E. M. Forster's Passage to India, depicting British racism and the confused heroine nearly destroying a native Indian man's life because he was more attractive than her fiancé? Or Rumor Godden's novels and stories set in the India of her childhood, and where she returned to live with her children, their cook adding ground glass to their food? I have never forgotten her short story Mercy, Pity, and Love where a man of privilege is thinking about this thesis as his wife is on a buying spree, while on the street an starving woman holds her dying baby.
No, India holds such poverty and cruelness next to its beauty and exotic attractions that it is not easy to encounter it. A family member by marriage went to India and talked about the beggars who sat on the traffic circle, obviously unprepared for what they would see.
"...but then he was hopeful and it's hope that kills you in the end"--from A State of Freedom
A State of Freedom is a novel in five stories that are interconnected by characters, each story revealing that character's life and challenges. The characters include native Indians crushed by poverty and desperately hoping for a better life, and those who have gone abroad and return to their homeland to see it with new eyes, the eyes of an outsider.
Can we go home again? We leave and the world changes us so that when we return we can not become again who we were. We know too much, we have assumed new values, or perhaps we just see with fresh vision what we had ignored before, familiar things we once accepted become horrors.
The first story concerns an native Indian who has brought his child to see the land of his nativity, and then is appalled by what they see, starting with a man falling from a tall building. He us upset knowing his child is being exposed to the harsh realities of poverty.
The second story concerns a man visiting his family who becomes overly friendly with the staff; invited to visit the cook's home village he realizes he "had failed to imagine how other people live."
The third story I could not read through; children find a bear cub and ask a man to teach it to be a dancing bear--which the father and son in the first story encounter. When they found the cub they were concerned for it, but the training is cruel and inhumane; the ending is horrifying.
The fourth story concerns Milly who works for the wealthy family in the second story, Her mother sent her away at age eight to be a domestic worker. When she asks when she will return home again, her mother tells her, you won't come back. The girl is desperate to learn, to find a better life. Every few years she is moved to a new position. She finds herself virtually imprisoned in never-ending work. Until rescued from her tower by a clever man.
The last story is stream-of-consciousness, the thoughts of an ailing construction worker desperate to complete his job, his mind wandering to the boy in a car he had seen, wishing he could be "the pampered son of a rich man." But he is betrayed, for neither he or the boy escape their mutual fate.
The novel is dark and painful. Why would I choose to endure such unhappiness? Why should one read this book?
One cannot change the way of the world, or the workings of a foreign society, but one can learn to see beyond the narrow limits of our comfortable world. We can understand how others live, we can learn mercy, pity and compassion.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
What story set in India is easy to read? E. M. Forster's Passage to India, depicting British racism and the confused heroine nearly destroying a native Indian man's life because he was more attractive than her fiancé? Or Rumor Godden's novels and stories set in the India of her childhood, and where she returned to live with her children, their cook adding ground glass to their food? I have never forgotten her short story Mercy, Pity, and Love where a man of privilege is thinking about this thesis as his wife is on a buying spree, while on the street an starving woman holds her dying baby.
No, India holds such poverty and cruelness next to its beauty and exotic attractions that it is not easy to encounter it. A family member by marriage went to India and talked about the beggars who sat on the traffic circle, obviously unprepared for what they would see.
"...but then he was hopeful and it's hope that kills you in the end"--from A State of Freedom
A State of Freedom is a novel in five stories that are interconnected by characters, each story revealing that character's life and challenges. The characters include native Indians crushed by poverty and desperately hoping for a better life, and those who have gone abroad and return to their homeland to see it with new eyes, the eyes of an outsider.
Can we go home again? We leave and the world changes us so that when we return we can not become again who we were. We know too much, we have assumed new values, or perhaps we just see with fresh vision what we had ignored before, familiar things we once accepted become horrors.
The first story concerns an native Indian who has brought his child to see the land of his nativity, and then is appalled by what they see, starting with a man falling from a tall building. He us upset knowing his child is being exposed to the harsh realities of poverty.
The second story concerns a man visiting his family who becomes overly friendly with the staff; invited to visit the cook's home village he realizes he "had failed to imagine how other people live."
The third story I could not read through; children find a bear cub and ask a man to teach it to be a dancing bear--which the father and son in the first story encounter. When they found the cub they were concerned for it, but the training is cruel and inhumane; the ending is horrifying.
The fourth story concerns Milly who works for the wealthy family in the second story, Her mother sent her away at age eight to be a domestic worker. When she asks when she will return home again, her mother tells her, you won't come back. The girl is desperate to learn, to find a better life. Every few years she is moved to a new position. She finds herself virtually imprisoned in never-ending work. Until rescued from her tower by a clever man.
The last story is stream-of-consciousness, the thoughts of an ailing construction worker desperate to complete his job, his mind wandering to the boy in a car he had seen, wishing he could be "the pampered son of a rich man." But he is betrayed, for neither he or the boy escape their mutual fate.
The novel is dark and painful. Why would I choose to endure such unhappiness? Why should one read this book?
One cannot change the way of the world, or the workings of a foreign society, but one can learn to see beyond the narrow limits of our comfortable world. We can understand how others live, we can learn mercy, pity and compassion.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
January 17, 2018
This interview gives an excellent perspective on some of Mukherjee’s inspirations:
https://www.thenational.ae/2.1975/acc...
The book, both in title, structure and content is inspired by V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State
In this book, however, the prologue is a poorly written story about a professor returning to India with his American born son, riddled with cliches – on only the second page, the two pass by a series of signboards including “100% VAGETARIAN” and as they pass a Coca-Cola sign, the boy is able to read that trademark universal wave even though he couldn’t read the language.
The story does however set up later sections, the father witnesses a labourer falling to his death, as they wait in a car a beggar and a bear appear beside the car, the beggar with a fox-like face like a ghostly tour guide that the father has seen previously. The idea of opening with a ghost story is a deliberate one:
The second part of the book is around another non-resident Indian – this time a young London-based designer and his annual visits to his family home, where he interacts with two servants – the cook Renu, and another servant Milly: his Western values clash with the more traditional views of his upbringing in his relations with them. My primary school daughters were telling me, when writing a story recently, that their teacher is always urging them to “show not tell” when writing a story – but Mukherjee fails to follow this edict, with the character explaining:
After these initial weaknesses though, the book becomes much stronger and explores the “painful histories and unsettled stories” opened up by the ghost story.
In the remainder of the second section, the son decides to visit Renu’s home village, only to realise the almost insurmountable cultural barriers between him and the life of her relatives – and also having to confront the fact that what he sees as a positive story (Renu using her savings to pay for her nephew to attend a top university abroad) has a clear downside (it is at the expense of her own daughter’s education and upbringing).
The third section gives us the back story of the man and his bear – with the cruelness he and many others exhibit to the bear both standing as a wider metaphor for inequality in India (but here now with Mukherjee in show mode) and as a direct reference to (the lack of) animal rights in India.
The fourth section is Milly’s back story but interleaved with the story of her childhood friend Soni – while Milly sees her escape from poverty as acting as a servant in big Cities (with mixed results – one of her placements effectively ending up as captivity, but with her eventually meeting her husband), her friend becomes a Naxalite guerilla.
The fifth section is a brief stream of consciousness from the construction worker (who we realise is the brother of the bear handler) before his death.
Despite the links between the sections, there is a clear lack of resolution to the stories (for example a key mystery in the first story is the open animosity of Renu towards Milly, and while this is acknowledged in Renu’s story it is not explained) and the final tale of the construction worker has no real resolutions or reveals to the other stories. Similarly although there are potential cameo appearances of the scientist in the second, third and fourth sections, none are clear.
This again seems a deliberate stylistic device, with the author commenting:
Overall this is a mixed novel – I found it difficult to forget the sheer clunkiness of the opening pages, but also enjoyed the way in which the novel explored modern India and the divides between castes, classes, religions, animals, gender (especially in terms of education), residents and returning non-residents, generations, regions. A key theme of the book also is transitions and attempts to move across those divides. And while there is much bleakness to the writing there is also life and vibrancy – particularly in the detailed descriptions of cuisine in the second and fourth sections and Milly’s story in particular ends on a positive note:
https://www.thenational.ae/2.1975/acc...
The book, both in title, structure and content is inspired by V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State
It is a wonderfully formally audacious book. He has three novellas bookended by a prologue and epilogue, and not a single of those narratives join in any kind of obvious way, and yet it is a novel. I found myself asking, Why is it a novel? It returns very interesting answers
In this book, however, the prologue is a poorly written story about a professor returning to India with his American born son, riddled with cliches – on only the second page, the two pass by a series of signboards including “100% VAGETARIAN” and as they pass a Coca-Cola sign, the boy is able to read that trademark universal wave even though he couldn’t read the language.
The story does however set up later sections, the father witnesses a labourer falling to his death, as they wait in a car a beggar and a bear appear beside the car, the beggar with a fox-like face like a ghostly tour guide that the father has seen previously. The idea of opening with a ghost story is a deliberate one:
I was thinking carefully about what a ghost story does. A ghost exists always because something unhappy in the past has not been settled. I thought the perhaps the ghost story could be opened up to think about painful histories and unsettled history
The second part of the book is around another non-resident Indian – this time a young London-based designer and his annual visits to his family home, where he interacts with two servants – the cook Renu, and another servant Milly: his Western values clash with the more traditional views of his upbringing in his relations with them. My primary school daughters were telling me, when writing a story recently, that their teacher is always urging them to “show not tell” when writing a story – but Mukherjee fails to follow this edict, with the character explaining:
A deep seated, almost hard wired, cultural training injected outrage into my system at the fact of a servant answering back. But no sooner had it manifested than the over-riding educated-liberal reaction to the retrogressive nature of that first response pushed it down
After these initial weaknesses though, the book becomes much stronger and explores the “painful histories and unsettled stories” opened up by the ghost story.
In the remainder of the second section, the son decides to visit Renu’s home village, only to realise the almost insurmountable cultural barriers between him and the life of her relatives – and also having to confront the fact that what he sees as a positive story (Renu using her savings to pay for her nephew to attend a top university abroad) has a clear downside (it is at the expense of her own daughter’s education and upbringing).
The third section gives us the back story of the man and his bear – with the cruelness he and many others exhibit to the bear both standing as a wider metaphor for inequality in India (but here now with Mukherjee in show mode) and as a direct reference to (the lack of) animal rights in India.
The fourth section is Milly’s back story but interleaved with the story of her childhood friend Soni – while Milly sees her escape from poverty as acting as a servant in big Cities (with mixed results – one of her placements effectively ending up as captivity, but with her eventually meeting her husband), her friend becomes a Naxalite guerilla.
The fifth section is a brief stream of consciousness from the construction worker (who we realise is the brother of the bear handler) before his death.
Despite the links between the sections, there is a clear lack of resolution to the stories (for example a key mystery in the first story is the open animosity of Renu towards Milly, and while this is acknowledged in Renu’s story it is not explained) and the final tale of the construction worker has no real resolutions or reveals to the other stories. Similarly although there are potential cameo appearances of the scientist in the second, third and fourth sections, none are clear.
This again seems a deliberate stylistic device, with the author commenting:
There are people who have written very cohesive books with fractured narratives. David Mitchell comes to mind. Cloud Atlas, I think, is so wonderful in what he does with structure and tectonics. You will see everything join up in very unexpected ways. I wanted to write in a very non-David Mitchell kind of way. I thought a properly realistic novel would mean that things don’t join up. One ramification of the word ‘freedom’ is chaos. Things don’t cohere and they spin apart
Instead of tying everything up, A State of Freedom ends with fraying and chaos. That is a realistically Indian novel I feel. The whole Indian state that held together, miraculously, for the last 70 years since independence is fracturing
Overall this is a mixed novel – I found it difficult to forget the sheer clunkiness of the opening pages, but also enjoyed the way in which the novel explored modern India and the divides between castes, classes, religions, animals, gender (especially in terms of education), residents and returning non-residents, generations, regions. A key theme of the book also is transitions and attempts to move across those divides. And while there is much bleakness to the writing there is also life and vibrancy – particularly in the detailed descriptions of cuisine in the second and fourth sections and Milly’s story in particular ends on a positive note:
Something Soni says appeared, like a light she didn’t know existed aorund a corner. “Your life is in bits and pieces – a little bit here, a little bit there. One year in Dumri, another year somewhere else, then another year somewhere else again”. Milly disagrees, silently, voiceferously. Her life is not fragmented. To her it has unity and coherence. She gives it thoese qualities. How can movement from one place to another break you? Are you a terracota doll broken in transit.
September 9, 2017
A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee is out on paperback now by @penguinukbooks (Thanks for the review copy!)
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It took me a while after finishing the book to get my thoughts in order, like most books that I've loved as an adult, this book wasn't written to please, rather to make you scratch your brain cells through your scalp.
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#theguywiththebookreview presents A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee.
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ASOF consists of 5 stories ranging between 20-80 pages. Each focuses on one character and mostly their struggle to get through life and dare to dream beyond their comfort zone.
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I didn't know this while reading the book so when I finished the first chapter I was yearning for more of the first story but Neel takes you to the second story which has an overwhelming inclusion of food preparations, almost Murakami-esque with the descriptions.
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Here's what to look for:
▪️The writing style is really good as with most Indian writers, my fondness for Indian writing grows further with ASOF.
▪️The helplessness created by the author in the characters is unparalleled, I've never read such boxed up, claustrophobic characters. (I realized this but couldn't point it out until after talking to @sumaiyya.books)
▪️A brilliant portrayal of India and the daily struggles of Indians.
▪️5 different plots which mildly and rather inconsequentially link with each other by the end.
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Here's what to keep in mind before picking it up:
▪️There are some gross descriptions of animal cruelty which can really be a deal breaker for many.
▪️It doesn't seem to follow a conventional story telling format of a beginning middle and end.
▪️Pick it up if you're looking for something that's different and goes beyond the usual norms of fiction.
.
It took me a while after finishing the book to get my thoughts in order, like most books that I've loved as an adult, this book wasn't written to please, rather to make you scratch your brain cells through your scalp.
.
#theguywiththebookreview presents A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee.
.
ASOF consists of 5 stories ranging between 20-80 pages. Each focuses on one character and mostly their struggle to get through life and dare to dream beyond their comfort zone.
.
I didn't know this while reading the book so when I finished the first chapter I was yearning for more of the first story but Neel takes you to the second story which has an overwhelming inclusion of food preparations, almost Murakami-esque with the descriptions.
.
Here's what to look for:
▪️The writing style is really good as with most Indian writers, my fondness for Indian writing grows further with ASOF.
▪️The helplessness created by the author in the characters is unparalleled, I've never read such boxed up, claustrophobic characters. (I realized this but couldn't point it out until after talking to @sumaiyya.books)
▪️A brilliant portrayal of India and the daily struggles of Indians.
▪️5 different plots which mildly and rather inconsequentially link with each other by the end.
.
Here's what to keep in mind before picking it up:
▪️There are some gross descriptions of animal cruelty which can really be a deal breaker for many.
▪️It doesn't seem to follow a conventional story telling format of a beginning middle and end.
▪️Pick it up if you're looking for something that's different and goes beyond the usual norms of fiction.
August 14, 2018
Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a finished copy of this title for review purposes - all opinions are my own.
STATE OF FREEDOM is said to be a novel, but I would prefer to classify it as a collection of connected short stories or novellas ~ with the connections being sometimes fleeting. I had to reread several portions of the books multiple times to find the shared characters/moments that I missed the first time.
I have been trying for hours to try to determine how to rate this work, because it's a book I completely appreciate. It's a book that showed me the world through a lens I hadn't read through before. It's a book that ripped my heart out with its tales of abject poverty in India. And the ending of the first chapter/story (I'm still a little confused) is one that I will NEVER forget. There were parts of the book that I loved and raced through. BUT. There is an entire section of the book that deals with mistreatment of an animal, and this is a major trigger topic for me ~ I honestly couldn't read the majority of this story because it unsettled me so much, except to go back to skim to figure out the connected pieces. Oh, and the last segment/chapter of the book has zero punctuation or capitalization. It's a must read part of the book, though, and brings things together, so I really challenged my eyes and brain as I worked to read without my normal guideposts!
Ultimately, I'm happy to have read this book as I know it has made me a better world citizen and has given me a glimpse of India that I needed. It made me think in ways that most books don't and really pushed my reading comprehension. Recommended for fans of literary fiction and for those who want to push their comfort level and grow as a reader. I'm using this as my title for the "India" prompt for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge.
STATE OF FREEDOM is said to be a novel, but I would prefer to classify it as a collection of connected short stories or novellas ~ with the connections being sometimes fleeting. I had to reread several portions of the books multiple times to find the shared characters/moments that I missed the first time.
I have been trying for hours to try to determine how to rate this work, because it's a book I completely appreciate. It's a book that showed me the world through a lens I hadn't read through before. It's a book that ripped my heart out with its tales of abject poverty in India. And the ending of the first chapter/story (I'm still a little confused) is one that I will NEVER forget. There were parts of the book that I loved and raced through. BUT. There is an entire section of the book that deals with mistreatment of an animal, and this is a major trigger topic for me ~ I honestly couldn't read the majority of this story because it unsettled me so much, except to go back to skim to figure out the connected pieces. Oh, and the last segment/chapter of the book has zero punctuation or capitalization. It's a must read part of the book, though, and brings things together, so I really challenged my eyes and brain as I worked to read without my normal guideposts!
Ultimately, I'm happy to have read this book as I know it has made me a better world citizen and has given me a glimpse of India that I needed. It made me think in ways that most books don't and really pushed my reading comprehension. Recommended for fans of literary fiction and for those who want to push their comfort level and grow as a reader. I'm using this as my title for the "India" prompt for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge.
May 14, 2018
This is three novellas book-ended by two much shorter stories. The opening story is short and, if truth be told, not actually very interesting. However, as a man and his son travel together in a car, they see several things that are then explored in more depth in later stories. The see a man fall to his death from a construction project. They see a man with a dancing bear.
The second story introduces us to a man returning to India to visit his family and who spends time talking to two of the servants in his parents’ house, Renu and Milly. The fourth story is Milly’s back story. Between these two, the third story is the back story of the man with the bear. And the final story is a stream of conscious from the construction worker who fell to his death at the beginning of the book.
So, the stories are independent but linked.
The main themes are about the struggle for equality, the struggle for any kind of freedom or choice, the struggle for a better life.
I have very mixed feelings about the book. The first story didn’t grab me at all and I almost returned it to the library without reading further. The third story I found very uncomfortable with a lot of animal cruelty and some domestic violence. The second and fourth stories were far more engaging. I’m not quite sure what the fifth story adds to the book.
A mixed bag from my perspective and rather disappointing overall.
The second story introduces us to a man returning to India to visit his family and who spends time talking to two of the servants in his parents’ house, Renu and Milly. The fourth story is Milly’s back story. Between these two, the third story is the back story of the man with the bear. And the final story is a stream of conscious from the construction worker who fell to his death at the beginning of the book.
So, the stories are independent but linked.
The main themes are about the struggle for equality, the struggle for any kind of freedom or choice, the struggle for a better life.
I have very mixed feelings about the book. The first story didn’t grab me at all and I almost returned it to the library without reading further. The third story I found very uncomfortable with a lot of animal cruelty and some domestic violence. The second and fourth stories were far more engaging. I’m not quite sure what the fifth story adds to the book.
A mixed bag from my perspective and rather disappointing overall.
June 19, 2017
A State of Freedom is an enlightening, impeccably crafted novel, both tender and terrifying. It further explores the questions raised by Neel Mukherjee’s previous novels, A Life Apart and The Lives of Others: what is it to be a migrant, what it is to be poor, vulnerable and powerless, and what it is to be free – or to try to be.
The novel is formed of five interconnected sections with different voices and related characters, whose stories echo, frame and shape each other. This structure serves it perfectly – the contrasts and parallels: there are those who have the uneasy comfort of being rich and surrounded by the poor, and those like Milly, the domestic servant, who is familiar with poverty and hunger, who works to make what the rich enjoy, and prizes their leftovers.
Having found a kind of freedom for herself, Milly is determined that her daughter should enjoy the greater freedoms that come with education, and the protection it offers: ‘Milly couldn’t see her face, only the head of thick dark hair, which was shining, almost blue in its blackness, in the light from the bulb overhead. And how could she see her books if her head was obstructing the light? There seemed to be an invisible wall around the girl, something to hold the world at bay.’
There are scenes of both shocking and everyday cruelty, both inflicted and suffered: the novel shows brilliantly how people come to be cruel, and what it is like to experience cruelty. The account of Lakshman’s brutal training of his bear can’t help but arouse compassion for all those who find themselves at the rope end of somebody else’s pride, desperation, authority and lack of fellow feeling – though even Lakshman eventually experiences a small glimmering of possible empathy: ‘Through the murk inside him a single thought rises to the surface – what does the animal think?’ And yet A State of Freedom also shows the minor miracle that not all people in positions of power use their authority to crush others: power magnifies petty vices but also magnifies generosity.
This is a book about the tension between duty and obligation, particularly to family, and the desire (and need) to escape; and it is also about art, the limitations of those who make it and the limitations that are placed upon them, and what they come to recognise about themselves and others through the attempt. Lakshman struggles to train his dancing bear but is taught something by what he has taken on; and the visitor from London who is cooked for by Milly seeks to compile a book of recipes ‘without making anything appear watered-down, inauthentic, giving cause for the bitter ressentiment crowd to wield that age-old stick used to beat Indians who resided abroad – “tailoring things for Western tastes and sensibilities”.’
Milly leaves the village in which she grew up for a life in the city slums; her best friend Soni, whose life follows a very different path, asks her, ‘You don’t feel scattered, a little bit of your life here, a little bit of your life there? A broken life, in bits and pieces.’ Thinking of this later, Milly refutes it: ‘Her life is not fragmented. To her, it has unity and coherence. She gives it these qualities. How can movement from one place to another break you? Are you a terracotta doll, easily broken in transit?’
The turning-point for Soni follows an ordeal endured by her sister, and a visit to the village by a group of Maoist activists who prompt their audience to question their lot: ‘how long were people here going to put up with such humiliation, such indignities? Were they not human, too, or were they as nothing to the big people?’ In response, Soni approaches ‘the realisation of something fateful in herself’: ultimately she joins the group.
One of the book’s great achievements is to make us see what poverty, corruption and injustice do to people, and how and why they fuel revolution and violence. Education of all kinds offers at least the promise of a way out, whether it is the access to books Milly craves or other ways of reaching out to understand the unfamiliar, and trying to feel as well as to think. As the privileged young man Milly serves reflects, when offered hospitality his hosts can scarcely afford: ‘I felt ashamed, but couldn’t stop myself from thinking the small, mean thoughts; the mind really was the unruliest and basest of human attributes.’
The novel is formed of five interconnected sections with different voices and related characters, whose stories echo, frame and shape each other. This structure serves it perfectly – the contrasts and parallels: there are those who have the uneasy comfort of being rich and surrounded by the poor, and those like Milly, the domestic servant, who is familiar with poverty and hunger, who works to make what the rich enjoy, and prizes their leftovers.
Having found a kind of freedom for herself, Milly is determined that her daughter should enjoy the greater freedoms that come with education, and the protection it offers: ‘Milly couldn’t see her face, only the head of thick dark hair, which was shining, almost blue in its blackness, in the light from the bulb overhead. And how could she see her books if her head was obstructing the light? There seemed to be an invisible wall around the girl, something to hold the world at bay.’
There are scenes of both shocking and everyday cruelty, both inflicted and suffered: the novel shows brilliantly how people come to be cruel, and what it is like to experience cruelty. The account of Lakshman’s brutal training of his bear can’t help but arouse compassion for all those who find themselves at the rope end of somebody else’s pride, desperation, authority and lack of fellow feeling – though even Lakshman eventually experiences a small glimmering of possible empathy: ‘Through the murk inside him a single thought rises to the surface – what does the animal think?’ And yet A State of Freedom also shows the minor miracle that not all people in positions of power use their authority to crush others: power magnifies petty vices but also magnifies generosity.
This is a book about the tension between duty and obligation, particularly to family, and the desire (and need) to escape; and it is also about art, the limitations of those who make it and the limitations that are placed upon them, and what they come to recognise about themselves and others through the attempt. Lakshman struggles to train his dancing bear but is taught something by what he has taken on; and the visitor from London who is cooked for by Milly seeks to compile a book of recipes ‘without making anything appear watered-down, inauthentic, giving cause for the bitter ressentiment crowd to wield that age-old stick used to beat Indians who resided abroad – “tailoring things for Western tastes and sensibilities”.’
Milly leaves the village in which she grew up for a life in the city slums; her best friend Soni, whose life follows a very different path, asks her, ‘You don’t feel scattered, a little bit of your life here, a little bit of your life there? A broken life, in bits and pieces.’ Thinking of this later, Milly refutes it: ‘Her life is not fragmented. To her, it has unity and coherence. She gives it these qualities. How can movement from one place to another break you? Are you a terracotta doll, easily broken in transit?’
The turning-point for Soni follows an ordeal endured by her sister, and a visit to the village by a group of Maoist activists who prompt their audience to question their lot: ‘how long were people here going to put up with such humiliation, such indignities? Were they not human, too, or were they as nothing to the big people?’ In response, Soni approaches ‘the realisation of something fateful in herself’: ultimately she joins the group.
One of the book’s great achievements is to make us see what poverty, corruption and injustice do to people, and how and why they fuel revolution and violence. Education of all kinds offers at least the promise of a way out, whether it is the access to books Milly craves or other ways of reaching out to understand the unfamiliar, and trying to feel as well as to think. As the privileged young man Milly serves reflects, when offered hospitality his hosts can scarcely afford: ‘I felt ashamed, but couldn’t stop myself from thinking the small, mean thoughts; the mind really was the unruliest and basest of human attributes.’
October 28, 2020
Neel Mukherjee's A State of Freedom is an impactfully written book of average things. This collection of connected 5 stories shows people envying the lives of others without realising what they are going through. 'Freedom' is an underlying aspiration in each chapter that is more tangible in some than others.
The tone of the book is sober and hopeless. Some of the stories can actually induce a sense of pain and cringe in the way it handles raw emotions. The author knows the strata of marginalised people can lend themselves to the whims of a pen - or so it feels given the relentless horror he throws their way.
What did not work for me is the return for the reader investing his time in each character. It seemed to be ok to not have closures - much like in life. And that is a problem when you connect the dots.
For a short book it made me lose interest in the fate of it's characters soon enough. It's a writer showing off his prowess than telling us a story.
The tone of the book is sober and hopeless. Some of the stories can actually induce a sense of pain and cringe in the way it handles raw emotions. The author knows the strata of marginalised people can lend themselves to the whims of a pen - or so it feels given the relentless horror he throws their way.
What did not work for me is the return for the reader investing his time in each character. It seemed to be ok to not have closures - much like in life. And that is a problem when you connect the dots.
For a short book it made me lose interest in the fate of it's characters soon enough. It's a writer showing off his prowess than telling us a story.
July 19, 2018
Beautiful, harrowing, thought provoking.
January 19, 2020
Hint kültürü gibi kast sisteminin hakim olduğu ama sömürgenin de baştan aşağı kol gezdiği bir kültüre dair güzel bir kurgu olmuş.
Bir sistemin yanlışlarını ancak dışına çıkınca anlayabilir bazen insan. Yanlışlar görüldükten sonra o sistemi bir daha olduğu gibi kabullenmek, sorgulamamak ya da sevmek belki imkansızlaşır.
Birbirine geçen öyküler ve karakterler şeklinde kurgulanmış olan kolay okunan ama bir o kadar dokunan bunkitabı okuyunuz!
Bir sistemin yanlışlarını ancak dışına çıkınca anlayabilir bazen insan. Yanlışlar görüldükten sonra o sistemi bir daha olduğu gibi kabullenmek, sorgulamamak ya da sevmek belki imkansızlaşır.
Birbirine geçen öyküler ve karakterler şeklinde kurgulanmış olan kolay okunan ama bir o kadar dokunan bunkitabı okuyunuz!
January 3, 2019
Absolutely fantastic. Read it guys, before it bags the numerous awards it deserves.
February 11, 2018
Around 3.5 stars. This is the second book that I have read by the author, "The lives of others" being the first one, which was a really good book. It presented a really interesting tale of an old-school Bengali household as it struggles to run a family business while keeping their familial bonds intact.
This book presents the story in a different format; a set of 5 stories in parts, following and focussing on an individual's story as they bump into those from the other segments. The recurring theme among these segments is that of personal struggle, a desire to overcome the things holding them back and a need to make something better out of their lives, as the name suggests, to move to a state of freedom: freedom from oppression, from adversity and from travesties. The stories have the themes of social inequality, injustice and other issues plaguing the socio-political scenario in modern India. However, the book really doesn't bring anything new to the table. If you've read modern Indian fiction, these themes have been quite overused, especially by authors from the diaspora writing about India. This made me feel the book was sort of derivative, for a new reader it would definitely be more appealing. The writing is good, falters at places but manages to shine too, especially when it deals with the inner struggle of the characters which the author shows to visit what they do and what they do it. Whether is it the expat with his ideas of liberalism who tries to hold with the maids at his house and wants to know about their background, or the poor farmer who raises a bear cub by the stick to eke out a living, or the lower caste convert woman who moves between households trying to give a good life to her kids. The book is a little inconsistent when it comes to the local flavour, it translates somethings and leaves some, explains some anachronisms and leaves out others, making it a bit jarring and makes me wonder about the target audience of the book and if they would find it odd.
It does show a realistic picture of the class boundaries that exists in modern India, where exploitation is rife and discrimination on caste and class lines commonplace. It's a testament to the inherent desire among the people to try to overcome these differences, to try and rise above them.
The book is a brisk read, provides a dose of realism in an often written about topic, chooses to delve into the discriminatory differences from opposite perspectives. It has it flaws, more noticeable to voracious readers of the genre.
This book presents the story in a different format; a set of 5 stories in parts, following and focussing on an individual's story as they bump into those from the other segments. The recurring theme among these segments is that of personal struggle, a desire to overcome the things holding them back and a need to make something better out of their lives, as the name suggests, to move to a state of freedom: freedom from oppression, from adversity and from travesties. The stories have the themes of social inequality, injustice and other issues plaguing the socio-political scenario in modern India. However, the book really doesn't bring anything new to the table. If you've read modern Indian fiction, these themes have been quite overused, especially by authors from the diaspora writing about India. This made me feel the book was sort of derivative, for a new reader it would definitely be more appealing. The writing is good, falters at places but manages to shine too, especially when it deals with the inner struggle of the characters which the author shows to visit what they do and what they do it. Whether is it the expat with his ideas of liberalism who tries to hold with the maids at his house and wants to know about their background, or the poor farmer who raises a bear cub by the stick to eke out a living, or the lower caste convert woman who moves between households trying to give a good life to her kids. The book is a little inconsistent when it comes to the local flavour, it translates somethings and leaves some, explains some anachronisms and leaves out others, making it a bit jarring and makes me wonder about the target audience of the book and if they would find it odd.
It does show a realistic picture of the class boundaries that exists in modern India, where exploitation is rife and discrimination on caste and class lines commonplace. It's a testament to the inherent desire among the people to try to overcome these differences, to try and rise above them.
The book is a brisk read, provides a dose of realism in an often written about topic, chooses to delve into the discriminatory differences from opposite perspectives. It has it flaws, more noticeable to voracious readers of the genre.
May 26, 2018
This is a tough one to rate. The writing is excellent, but it is billed as a novel. It's not. It's five loosely connected stories. So, I'm docking a star because that's annoying.
This was also a tough one to read. When cruelty is described, it is commonplace and true. It doesn't flinch. I see why it was on the Booker list.
This was also a tough one to read. When cruelty is described, it is commonplace and true. It doesn't flinch. I see why it was on the Booker list.
May 22, 2018
Reading this felt like going on vacation to a place that just makes you feel guilty about your own stable and financially secure life. We are taken to India, a country where the gap between the rich and poor is so wide that it is almost hard to believe all those people are living door to door.
A State of Freedom is a collection of draining short-stories, that are all linked to each other. In the first one, a father visits India with his son after having moved to the United States, where his own culture manages to shock him, making him feel like a stranger in his own country.
"Truth was, he felt, he was no longer a proper Indian; making a life in the plush West had made him skinless like a good, sheltered first-word liberal. He was now a tourist in his own country; no longer 'his own country', he corrected him fastidiously."
During their uncomfortable visits of tourist attractions, they pass a construction worker, who later gets a story of his own. This sense of interconnectedness makes the world Mukherjee paints a vivid and pulsing one. But dominating in his stories is the poverty, the everyday struggle of people who live in a society marked by the unequal distribution of money and caste-thinking.
This is certainly an ambitious project, especially as the author doesn't shy away from showing grief and poverty without end. Certainly it is important not to look away when one is confronted with the dark sides of our world and its people, but as a work of fiction this was a struggle to get through, as one nightmarish scenario would follow the next.
Even though the stories themselves were all different, they all lead to the same conclusion and it was hard for me to find reasons to keep on reading after I got the point A State of Freedom was making. There is little direct speech and the writing didn't make me feel particularly connected to either character, I felt like an observer more than a part of the actual story, which suited the reflective commentary this work wants to present, but didn't necessarily help me engage with the story.
All in all, this was certainly an informative read, yet one that was neither engaging nor particularly fun and I would have felt perfectly satisfied had I been presented with just one of these five stories included.
A State of Freedom is a collection of draining short-stories, that are all linked to each other. In the first one, a father visits India with his son after having moved to the United States, where his own culture manages to shock him, making him feel like a stranger in his own country.
"Truth was, he felt, he was no longer a proper Indian; making a life in the plush West had made him skinless like a good, sheltered first-word liberal. He was now a tourist in his own country; no longer 'his own country', he corrected him fastidiously."
During their uncomfortable visits of tourist attractions, they pass a construction worker, who later gets a story of his own. This sense of interconnectedness makes the world Mukherjee paints a vivid and pulsing one. But dominating in his stories is the poverty, the everyday struggle of people who live in a society marked by the unequal distribution of money and caste-thinking.
This is certainly an ambitious project, especially as the author doesn't shy away from showing grief and poverty without end. Certainly it is important not to look away when one is confronted with the dark sides of our world and its people, but as a work of fiction this was a struggle to get through, as one nightmarish scenario would follow the next.
Even though the stories themselves were all different, they all lead to the same conclusion and it was hard for me to find reasons to keep on reading after I got the point A State of Freedom was making. There is little direct speech and the writing didn't make me feel particularly connected to either character, I felt like an observer more than a part of the actual story, which suited the reflective commentary this work wants to present, but didn't necessarily help me engage with the story.
All in all, this was certainly an informative read, yet one that was neither engaging nor particularly fun and I would have felt perfectly satisfied had I been presented with just one of these five stories included.
November 22, 2017
Let me make clear that it only took a few paragraphs to understand why Mukherjee got a Man Booker short-listing for his last work. The writing here is exquisite, particularly in the final stream-of-consciousness pages. I'll add that fragmentary novels comprised of seemingly unrelated vignettes do not scare me. I can even tackle Joyce, and novels that resemble short stories, like Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond, are fascinating. In considering A State of Freedom, I kept wavering between three and five stars, with almost no consideration of four for a compromise ranking.
It also wasn't the sheer horror of some of Mukherjee's imagery of those trying to escape poverty that threw me off. Many of the villagers of rural India remained joyful and stoic, even as the ruthlessness of caste assaulted them from every angle. Mukherjee could take on this subject from every angle, and showed us how it was not unique to Hindu nationalism, but was present in Bengali concepts of class (and indeed, in every human culture).
So what made this book a tough struggle to enjoy? Mukherjee himself said he wanted to craft a novel free of sinews and binding glue, and he has done so. Sure, each part of the book bears some resemblance to every other part, with characters populating more than one portion. But in the end, it is not clear how they should be tied together, or how it helps us comprehend the struggles of the underclasses.
The opening segment describing a tragedy at Fatehpur Sikri involving a child, introduces us to a fox-faced man. Is this Lakshman or his brother Ramlal, or is it a transcendent being speaking for all foxes? Similarly, is the manual laborer suffering from COPD (asbestosis?) at the end of the book Ramlal, or merely a faceless individual much like him? And would it matter if we could connect the dots? Maybe this is the puzzle Mukherjee wants to leave us with, but I would be aided in understanding if the images coalesced in some way.
The clearest fine-tuning of images comes in those parts of the novel dealing with Milly, who moves from city to city performing day labor until she finally meets a family capable of showing true compassion. Her story is a happy ending of sorts, particularly in comparison with that of her best friend Soni who joins the Naxalite rebels. It's clear, and perhaps almost a no-brainer, to say that throwing one's fate to a Maoist group hoping to seize reins for a better life is a loser's game from the get-go, but is Mikherjee saying something more here?
The problem I have is that for every Milly, we have a dying Ramlal trying to catch his blood-breath, we have a Lakshman and his dancing bear, who is only able to manipulate forms of cruelty to attempt a better life, we have the urban London dweller trying to skate atop rural village lives for the ultimate recipe, we have the father of the opening pages confronting tragedy for no particular reason. It would be a mistake to say the book left me confused or frustrated. Each fragmentary story was extremely well-told in isolation. But the images of Indian rural life did not coalesce for me, and I was left with horror and sadness, with only Milly offering a partial redemption.
In an interview with Hanya Yanagihara, Mukherjee cites W.H. Auden's observation that "Poetry makes nothing happen," and says that fiction, along with most arts, has no traction in the real world. Mukherjee adds that "at this particular moment in the world, nothing seems to have traction: not evidence, not science, not truth." I fully agree. But as someone fully committed to a conscious strategy of being-in-the-world, I would like a work of fiction to at least obliquely address how that is to be accomplished. A State of Freedom is a powerful, exquisitely-written book which unfortunately didn't leave me with an idea of how to consider the problems of caste and class in an impoverished nation, let alone move on to any theories of what is to be done.
It also wasn't the sheer horror of some of Mukherjee's imagery of those trying to escape poverty that threw me off. Many of the villagers of rural India remained joyful and stoic, even as the ruthlessness of caste assaulted them from every angle. Mukherjee could take on this subject from every angle, and showed us how it was not unique to Hindu nationalism, but was present in Bengali concepts of class (and indeed, in every human culture).
So what made this book a tough struggle to enjoy? Mukherjee himself said he wanted to craft a novel free of sinews and binding glue, and he has done so. Sure, each part of the book bears some resemblance to every other part, with characters populating more than one portion. But in the end, it is not clear how they should be tied together, or how it helps us comprehend the struggles of the underclasses.
The opening segment describing a tragedy at Fatehpur Sikri involving a child, introduces us to a fox-faced man. Is this Lakshman or his brother Ramlal, or is it a transcendent being speaking for all foxes? Similarly, is the manual laborer suffering from COPD (asbestosis?) at the end of the book Ramlal, or merely a faceless individual much like him? And would it matter if we could connect the dots? Maybe this is the puzzle Mukherjee wants to leave us with, but I would be aided in understanding if the images coalesced in some way.
The clearest fine-tuning of images comes in those parts of the novel dealing with Milly, who moves from city to city performing day labor until she finally meets a family capable of showing true compassion. Her story is a happy ending of sorts, particularly in comparison with that of her best friend Soni who joins the Naxalite rebels. It's clear, and perhaps almost a no-brainer, to say that throwing one's fate to a Maoist group hoping to seize reins for a better life is a loser's game from the get-go, but is Mikherjee saying something more here?
The problem I have is that for every Milly, we have a dying Ramlal trying to catch his blood-breath, we have a Lakshman and his dancing bear, who is only able to manipulate forms of cruelty to attempt a better life, we have the urban London dweller trying to skate atop rural village lives for the ultimate recipe, we have the father of the opening pages confronting tragedy for no particular reason. It would be a mistake to say the book left me confused or frustrated. Each fragmentary story was extremely well-told in isolation. But the images of Indian rural life did not coalesce for me, and I was left with horror and sadness, with only Milly offering a partial redemption.
In an interview with Hanya Yanagihara, Mukherjee cites W.H. Auden's observation that "Poetry makes nothing happen," and says that fiction, along with most arts, has no traction in the real world. Mukherjee adds that "at this particular moment in the world, nothing seems to have traction: not evidence, not science, not truth." I fully agree. But as someone fully committed to a conscious strategy of being-in-the-world, I would like a work of fiction to at least obliquely address how that is to be accomplished. A State of Freedom is a powerful, exquisitely-written book which unfortunately didn't leave me with an idea of how to consider the problems of caste and class in an impoverished nation, let alone move on to any theories of what is to be done.
February 13, 2018
An updated, less angry reaction:
This book upset me deeply, both because much of the content is utterly depressing and often repulsive and because I did not enjoy the shifting perspectives and writing styles. The first story's ending still confuses me, and so much of the writing at that point was (in my opinion) ridiculously and unnecessarily wordy, with obscure words that weren't in my vocabulary and I also could not riddle out because the context clues were also so strangely worded. Felt like a thesaurus exercise gone wrong, especially when modern phrases like "big no-no" and "hot mess" were mixed in. (These writing complaints of mine declined as the book went on, until the last portion, which is free of any punctuation and deeply hurts the former copyeditor in me.)
Mostly, however, I'm still left with a few questions that I NEED answered (and usually I'm the type to let an ambiguous/unsettling/confusing ending be). They are at varying levels of importance, but for the sake of my sanity, I shall list them here:
1. Why does Renu hate Milly so much? Does Milly actually do the things Renu accuses her of? The story from Milly's perspective does not seem to address this plotpoint, which maybe nods at the lack of importance of my question (???)
2. As mentioned earlier, what prompts the first part's ending?! Help.
3. What's with all the changes in writing style and format? Is it just the author experimenting? Are the different styles connected to the characters somehow? Why can't I figure this out for myself? Why am I so angry???
Maybe this deserves more than 2 stars. Whatever. Okay, enough. Hopefully some of my questions will be answered on March 1, when Mukherjee visits Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ for a discussion with (writing goddess) Jhumpa Lahiri.
This book upset me deeply, both because much of the content is utterly depressing and often repulsive and because I did not enjoy the shifting perspectives and writing styles. The first story's ending still confuses me, and so much of the writing at that point was (in my opinion) ridiculously and unnecessarily wordy, with obscure words that weren't in my vocabulary and I also could not riddle out because the context clues were also so strangely worded. Felt like a thesaurus exercise gone wrong, especially when modern phrases like "big no-no" and "hot mess" were mixed in. (These writing complaints of mine declined as the book went on, until the last portion, which is free of any punctuation and deeply hurts the former copyeditor in me.)
Mostly, however, I'm still left with a few questions that I NEED answered (and usually I'm the type to let an ambiguous/unsettling/confusing ending be). They are at varying levels of importance, but for the sake of my sanity, I shall list them here:
1. Why does Renu hate Milly so much? Does Milly actually do the things Renu accuses her of? The story from Milly's perspective does not seem to address this plotpoint, which maybe nods at the lack of importance of my question (???)
2. As mentioned earlier, what prompts the first part's ending?! Help.
3. What's with all the changes in writing style and format? Is it just the author experimenting? Are the different styles connected to the characters somehow? Why can't I figure this out for myself? Why am I so angry???
Maybe this deserves more than 2 stars. Whatever. Okay, enough. Hopefully some of my questions will be answered on March 1, when Mukherjee visits Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ for a discussion with (writing goddess) Jhumpa Lahiri.
April 2, 2018
When I started writing this review, I didn't really know what to make of this book. By the end, I knew it deserved five stars.
I will say, I love reading books by Indian authors. There's a certain pleasure in seeing a book in English with sprinkles of Gujarati, Hindi, and other languages I barely know. When you grow up reading about the rolling hills of England or the plains of the American Midwest, seeing India described in the same tones is validating, and sometimes strange. Many of the novels I've enjoyed about India have been lyrical, loving. Every time I visit, I am exposed to, at minimum, a middle-class urban existence. I have seen beautiful architecture, natural wonders, and the highlights of thousands of years of civilization. But A State of Freedom reminds us of the darkness that underlies so much of the beauty.
From start to finish, it's devastating. I don't know what it must be like to read as a non-Indian, but as someone who has lived in and visited many of the settings, it felt personal. There are a lot of dark truths about the poverty and suffering that we all prefer to shy away from. Mukherjee does the opposite: he puts it all under a magnifying glass.
There's not a whole lot of happiness in this book. I don't even know if there's hope. However, I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
I will say, I love reading books by Indian authors. There's a certain pleasure in seeing a book in English with sprinkles of Gujarati, Hindi, and other languages I barely know. When you grow up reading about the rolling hills of England or the plains of the American Midwest, seeing India described in the same tones is validating, and sometimes strange. Many of the novels I've enjoyed about India have been lyrical, loving. Every time I visit, I am exposed to, at minimum, a middle-class urban existence. I have seen beautiful architecture, natural wonders, and the highlights of thousands of years of civilization. But A State of Freedom reminds us of the darkness that underlies so much of the beauty.
From start to finish, it's devastating. I don't know what it must be like to read as a non-Indian, but as someone who has lived in and visited many of the settings, it felt personal. There are a lot of dark truths about the poverty and suffering that we all prefer to shy away from. Mukherjee does the opposite: he puts it all under a magnifying glass.
There's not a whole lot of happiness in this book. I don't even know if there's hope. However, I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
August 27, 2017
This book crept up on me. It kept getting better and better and by Part IV I'm completely and irrevocably hooked and I'm officially in love - even though I was a little uncertain and unimpressed in the beginning.
This book broke my heart over and over again. It made me grateful for my literacy, for my family, for my daily meals that I take for granted, for my education and for being safe and happy enough to concern myself with trivial things like fictional novels and blogs and book club.
The ENDING OH MY GOD. All I can say is pay attention in the beginning because it's insane how he brings the story around full circle.
This book broke my heart over and over again. It made me grateful for my literacy, for my family, for my daily meals that I take for granted, for my education and for being safe and happy enough to concern myself with trivial things like fictional novels and blogs and book club.
The ENDING OH MY GOD. All I can say is pay attention in the beginning because it's insane how he brings the story around full circle.
July 31, 2024
Mukherjee has a keen eye for detail and a knack for describing scenes with just the right amount of detail to convey what needs to be conveyed. Nothing wasted. And here he writes beautifully a series of tales, rather tenuously linked (despite what some of the reviews here claim as being "interconnected").
But a better title than "A State Of Freedom" would have been "A State of Bondage" or perhaps "A State of Suffering, Unalleviated and Continuous" and I don't mean suffering in the detached Buddhist sense, but the mundane misery of hopeless lives kind of way. It was difficult to read without a feeling of despair.
But a better title than "A State Of Freedom" would have been "A State of Bondage" or perhaps "A State of Suffering, Unalleviated and Continuous" and I don't mean suffering in the detached Buddhist sense, but the mundane misery of hopeless lives kind of way. It was difficult to read without a feeling of despair.
December 20, 2017
I got a free old-school paper copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thanks to all who made this happen.
This book is not very enjoyable to read. The author might say that it is not supposed to be enjoyable to read, dealing as it does with themes of alienation and cruelty. However, it is possible to write about these topics without making the reader wish he/she had won a more pleasant Important Modern Novel from Goodreads. You don't have to write exclusively about happy topics, but the process of reading should not itself be a chore. For that and other reasons, I think that even the small amount of hullabaloo it has generated is not warranted. However, also I think the writer shows flashes of great talent and should be encouraged to carry on.
My paper copy has (at the end) an interview with the author in which he agrees with the interviewer’s contention that this novel is “deliberately in conversation with In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul”. I haven’t read this older Important Modern Novel, but I have read other books by the same author. My impression was that Naipaul is one of those authors you read like taking medicine: everybody tells you it’s going to be good for you, but you don't enjoy it going down.
Mukherjee is another one of those authors. Like Naipaul, you get the feeling that the author is very, very disappointed in how the rest of us are behaving, and will continue to issue unpleasant short stories until the situation improves. I associate this with books produced by smart young men who don't realize that, even though the world is fully of shortcomings, if you disapprove of too many things too obviously, and fail to pleasantly offer solutions, people, especially as you age, start crossing the street to avoid talking to you and also dismiss your books as the grumbling of an old crank. The moral is: try to be more discerning about the objects of your displeasure, and more charming in your criticism.
In addition, although the writer was being admirably honest and straightforward about Naipaul’s influence, telling readers that, in effect, they won’t be able to fully appreciate the sad and difficult book in their hands unless they read another sad and difficult book first doesn’t strike me as a winning marketing strategy.
Don't get me wrong: this book has some great clear writing, and there’s plenty to dislike in Mukherjee's India and, by extension, the world. Some examples of things to dislike: the grinding poverty, the wanton cruelty, the slavish devotion to class norms, and the general indifference to suffering. But I know that they are they are present in great abundance in India already, even if I have never been there. (How do I know this? I read books.) So, don’t tell me about it unless you are going to either reveal something new about it or suggest a remedy. Furthermore, don’t think that, for example, a long and graphic description of a severed hand is going to shock me out of my bourgeois complacency. I read it and my bourgeois complacency still remains firmly in place, just like it did with when I read all the other writers who attempted similar complacency-exploding stunts.
I’m the sort of hairpin who reads reviews and summaries of books before I read them, so I came to this book knowing that the stories were supposed to be interconnected, which made this book a novel, and NOT a (perhaps less marketable) book of short stories. However, the connections between the stories are loose at best, and I think that many readers, burdened with the normal distractions of life, could possibly go through the whole book without realizing the alleged connections between these tales, if they had not read reviews/book jacket summaries, etc., first.
For example, in the first story, a returned emigre and son are driving in sealed, air-conditioned comfort in an Indian city, and a man and his dancing bear appear briefly outside their passenger windows. Later, a man with a dancing bear is the subject of a story. Since there was no character development of the first appearance of the man with the dancing bear, and it seems reasonable to assume that India has many men with dancing bears, it did not occur to me that it was the same man with the dancing bear until I went back to the book reviews so I could read about what wiser people than I were thinking about this book.
One of the reason that interlocking short stories remain a popular wheeze is that it is fun to see characters in a surprisingly different light, e.g., a character who is a grumpy kill-joy in one story is revealed to have a secret sorrow in another. But that doesn’t really happen here, making the novel more like medicine-taking, see above.
If you stick with the book though, it gets better. The best story (you could read it first, or even exclusively) is the novella-length second-to-last story about a village girl’s journey to and survival in the cruel and ugly big city. The author even reveals, in one episode, a hitherto hidden talent for suspenseful writing. However, like the man with the bear above, the heroine, Milly, appears in an earlier story but is so fleeting and unmemorable in her first incarnation that I had to go back and check that I hadn’t missed some illuminating detail from Milly’s first appearance that would enhance the enjoyment and understanding of Milly’s second appearance. I hadn’t. Still, Milly attains three dimensions in her second appearance, and is worth waiting for.
This book is not very enjoyable to read. The author might say that it is not supposed to be enjoyable to read, dealing as it does with themes of alienation and cruelty. However, it is possible to write about these topics without making the reader wish he/she had won a more pleasant Important Modern Novel from Goodreads. You don't have to write exclusively about happy topics, but the process of reading should not itself be a chore. For that and other reasons, I think that even the small amount of hullabaloo it has generated is not warranted. However, also I think the writer shows flashes of great talent and should be encouraged to carry on.
My paper copy has (at the end) an interview with the author in which he agrees with the interviewer’s contention that this novel is “deliberately in conversation with In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul”. I haven’t read this older Important Modern Novel, but I have read other books by the same author. My impression was that Naipaul is one of those authors you read like taking medicine: everybody tells you it’s going to be good for you, but you don't enjoy it going down.
Mukherjee is another one of those authors. Like Naipaul, you get the feeling that the author is very, very disappointed in how the rest of us are behaving, and will continue to issue unpleasant short stories until the situation improves. I associate this with books produced by smart young men who don't realize that, even though the world is fully of shortcomings, if you disapprove of too many things too obviously, and fail to pleasantly offer solutions, people, especially as you age, start crossing the street to avoid talking to you and also dismiss your books as the grumbling of an old crank. The moral is: try to be more discerning about the objects of your displeasure, and more charming in your criticism.
In addition, although the writer was being admirably honest and straightforward about Naipaul’s influence, telling readers that, in effect, they won’t be able to fully appreciate the sad and difficult book in their hands unless they read another sad and difficult book first doesn’t strike me as a winning marketing strategy.
Don't get me wrong: this book has some great clear writing, and there’s plenty to dislike in Mukherjee's India and, by extension, the world. Some examples of things to dislike: the grinding poverty, the wanton cruelty, the slavish devotion to class norms, and the general indifference to suffering. But I know that they are they are present in great abundance in India already, even if I have never been there. (How do I know this? I read books.) So, don’t tell me about it unless you are going to either reveal something new about it or suggest a remedy. Furthermore, don’t think that, for example, a long and graphic description of a severed hand is going to shock me out of my bourgeois complacency. I read it and my bourgeois complacency still remains firmly in place, just like it did with when I read all the other writers who attempted similar complacency-exploding stunts.
I’m the sort of hairpin who reads reviews and summaries of books before I read them, so I came to this book knowing that the stories were supposed to be interconnected, which made this book a novel, and NOT a (perhaps less marketable) book of short stories. However, the connections between the stories are loose at best, and I think that many readers, burdened with the normal distractions of life, could possibly go through the whole book without realizing the alleged connections between these tales, if they had not read reviews/book jacket summaries, etc., first.
For example, in the first story, a returned emigre and son are driving in sealed, air-conditioned comfort in an Indian city, and a man and his dancing bear appear briefly outside their passenger windows. Later, a man with a dancing bear is the subject of a story. Since there was no character development of the first appearance of the man with the dancing bear, and it seems reasonable to assume that India has many men with dancing bears, it did not occur to me that it was the same man with the dancing bear until I went back to the book reviews so I could read about what wiser people than I were thinking about this book.
One of the reason that interlocking short stories remain a popular wheeze is that it is fun to see characters in a surprisingly different light, e.g., a character who is a grumpy kill-joy in one story is revealed to have a secret sorrow in another. But that doesn’t really happen here, making the novel more like medicine-taking, see above.
If you stick with the book though, it gets better. The best story (you could read it first, or even exclusively) is the novella-length second-to-last story about a village girl’s journey to and survival in the cruel and ugly big city. The author even reveals, in one episode, a hitherto hidden talent for suspenseful writing. However, like the man with the bear above, the heroine, Milly, appears in an earlier story but is so fleeting and unmemorable in her first incarnation that I had to go back and check that I hadn’t missed some illuminating detail from Milly’s first appearance that would enhance the enjoyment and understanding of Milly’s second appearance. I hadn’t. Still, Milly attains three dimensions in her second appearance, and is worth waiting for.
April 16, 2021
Outstanding Collection of Short Stories
An extraordinary collection of short stories taking place in India and connected together by theme of freedom and unfreedom. All stories focus on Indians attempting to find freedom in a place where people are defined in the caste and situations they live in. All characters are fleshed out and well defined. The stories are poignant and moving.
An extraordinary collection of short stories taking place in India and connected together by theme of freedom and unfreedom. All stories focus on Indians attempting to find freedom in a place where people are defined in the caste and situations they live in. All characters are fleshed out and well defined. The stories are poignant and moving.
Read
November 30, 2021DNF because of cruelty to a bear cub. Yuck! (3.5* prior to this)
August 18, 2025
Excellent, well-written, engrossing novel set in India about servants and their higher-ups, and the complicated relationships this creates. Strong character study and beautiful writing.
July 19, 2018
I have been generally off books by Indian writers in English, especially those living in the West. There is often something contrived about the stories, even when the writing is good. In the case of this author, he writes well, and I picked up this book only because I had liked his earlier two books. And of course, this book too had great reviews at all the right places -NYT and Guardian etc...
It is not a story, but the account of the lives of five protagonists whose lives overlap very briefly and marginally. And these lives are of the everyday Indians I interact with, be it my Jharkandi maid or my neighbor’s Bengali cook, the struggling labourer working on the large building coming up,next door, the children of our friends who all seem to work in the west and make annual,trips home. The sharp contrast between the physical proximity and the human distance determined by class and economics among those who serve and those who are served - this is a reality but also a daily encounter that leaves me guilty and traumatised.
So, while I can understand the ‘hoo-haa’ from western critics and readers, for putting forth the realities of modern India, it cannot have the same appeal for Indian readers. At least it did not for me! Also this group of writers seem to primarily address their western readers - the ‘Wikipedia’ type description of Jharkhand, the travails of the poor accessing medical care in remote India and other such description seem like waste of words for us.
It is not a story, but the account of the lives of five protagonists whose lives overlap very briefly and marginally. And these lives are of the everyday Indians I interact with, be it my Jharkandi maid or my neighbor’s Bengali cook, the struggling labourer working on the large building coming up,next door, the children of our friends who all seem to work in the west and make annual,trips home. The sharp contrast between the physical proximity and the human distance determined by class and economics among those who serve and those who are served - this is a reality but also a daily encounter that leaves me guilty and traumatised.
So, while I can understand the ‘hoo-haa’ from western critics and readers, for putting forth the realities of modern India, it cannot have the same appeal for Indian readers. At least it did not for me! Also this group of writers seem to primarily address their western readers - the ‘Wikipedia’ type description of Jharkhand, the travails of the poor accessing medical care in remote India and other such description seem like waste of words for us.
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