The Lives of Others
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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.
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