The Illicit Happiness of Other People

Manu Joseph

HarperCollins

352 pages, R499

Set in Madras in 1990, this novel involves the relentlessness of a failed writer who has found purpose, an adolescent cartoonist’s dangerous interpretation of truth, the plots of a brilliant housewife, and the pure love of a 12-year-old boy for a beautiful girl. A darkly comic story from the author of the celebrated Serious Men.