Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by marigold_bookshelf
A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee
5.0
I read this book after so thoroughly enjoying Neel Mukherjees’s previous work “The Lives of Others”, justly shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker prize. My high expectations were well rewarded with this wonderful but disturbing novel set in modern-day India.
The book is made up of the stories of five very different characters, almost like five novellas woven together into a single novel by their common struggles, and through a loose but tragic narrative thread. All five characters, in their different ways, tell us about a struggle for freedom and yearning for a better life. Through their journeys we witness the brutal reality of poverty, class struggles, corruption and inequality in contemporary India.
Each of the protagonists is very richly drawn. Whilst we might empathise with their fights to survive, we will not necessarily sympathise with the characters themselves. Such is the case for Lakshman, the man who abandons his badly treated wife to horrifically exercise dreadful cruelty on training a dancing bear with who he travels through villages scraping together a living.
The novel begins in a luxury hotel in Agra. Neel Mukherjee invites those few people who might be so lucky to stay in such places to be aware of the realities of the lives of millions of characters struggling in their daily lives outside.
The book is made up of the stories of five very different characters, almost like five novellas woven together into a single novel by their common struggles, and through a loose but tragic narrative thread. All five characters, in their different ways, tell us about a struggle for freedom and yearning for a better life. Through their journeys we witness the brutal reality of poverty, class struggles, corruption and inequality in contemporary India.
Each of the protagonists is very richly drawn. Whilst we might empathise with their fights to survive, we will not necessarily sympathise with the characters themselves. Such is the case for Lakshman, the man who abandons his badly treated wife to horrifically exercise dreadful cruelty on training a dancing bear with who he travels through villages scraping together a living.
The novel begins in a luxury hotel in Agra. Neel Mukherjee invites those few people who might be so lucky to stay in such places to be aware of the realities of the lives of millions of characters struggling in their daily lives outside.