The Lives of Others

01 July, 2014

Neel Mukherjee

Random House India

516 pages, RS 399

The aging patriarch and matriarch of the Ghosh family preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the still surface of their lives the waters are shifting. With poisonous rivalries between sisters-in-law festering and the implosion of the family business imminent, The Lives of Others tells the story of a family unravelling as the society around it fractures. Mukherjee’s second novel, following 2010’s A Life Apart, begins in 1966 and is set in a crumbling Calcutta mansion.