Author | Neel Mukherjee |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Chatto & Windus (UK); W. W. Norton (US) |
Publication date | 22 May 2014 (UK); 1 October 2014 (US) |
Publication place | India |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Pages | 528 pp (UK hardback edition) |
ISBN | 978-0-7011-8629-6 |
The Lives of Others is a novel by Neel Mukherjee. It was published in 2014 by Chatto & Windus in the UK and W. W. Norton & Company in the US. The novel, the author's second one, was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize on 9 September 2014. [1] Bookbinder Tom McEwan was commissioned to make a custom binding for the book at the ceremony at the Guildhall. [2]
The novel is set in Calcutta (Kolkata) in the 1960s and follows a wealthy business family, one of whose members gets involved in extremist political activism. The book deals with the chasm between generations, and is set against a backdrop in which the gulf between the poor and the wealthy has never been wider. [3]
The novel is split into two interlacing narratives, typeset in different fonts. One is an epistolary account of a violent agrarian movement through the eyes of Ghosh family scion Supratik, who has left his home to mobilise the oppressed peasants against corrupt moneylenders and landlords. The other is a third-person account around the Ghosh family, [4] which forms the bulk of the book. [5] The story touches briefly on notable moments of the city's history such as the Bengal famine of 1943, the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946, and the Partition of India. Most of the action takes place in the years 1968–72. [6]
Like many other Indian novels in English, the text includes Bengali words and phrases. A family tree and a guide to Bengali relational terms is provided. [7]
The tension between classes is at the core of the novel. [8] The Statesman described the book to have a neo-orientalist agenda. [9]
The Lives of Others was favourably reviewed by novelists including Amitav Ghosh, A S Byatt, Anita Desai and Patrick Flanery. [9]
Critics praised the novel's intricate and detailed portrayal of middle-class Bengali life during the period. [9] [6] In a glowing review for The Guardian , A S Byatt complimented the author's capacity to imagine the lives of others. [10]
Reviewing for The Independent , Patrick Gale noted the author's taste for violent contrasts and narratives within narratives. [7] The New York Times likened Mukherjee with Tolstoy in his ability "to bring to life a diverse and expansive set of characters and to sharply evoke their interior worlds." [5] For The New York Review of Books , Anita Desai noted the eye for detail, as in Victorian novel, and in terms of theme, compared the book with Rabindranath Tagore's 1915 novel The Home and the World which depicts an altruistic aristocrat along with a villainous revolutionary. [11] Reviewing for The Telegraph , Patrick Flanery wrote favourably of the well-observed and psychologically nuanced scenes of collective family. [12] Il Sole 24 Ore likened the novel to Buddenbrooks (1901). [13]
In 2020, The Independent's Emma Lee-Potter listed The Lives of Others as one of the 12 best Indian novels. [14]
Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honour. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.
Anita Desai, is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London.
The Hungry Tide (2004) is the fourth novel by Indian-born author, Amitav Ghosh. Set in the Sundarbans, it follows an unlikely trio who travel up river together to find the rare Irrawaddy dolphin. It won the 2004 Hutch Crossword Book Award for Fiction.
The Calcutta Chromosome is a 1995 English-language novel by Indian author Amitav Ghosh. The book, set in Calcutta and New York City at some unspecified time in the future, is a medical thriller that dramatizes the adventures of people who are brought together by a mysterious turn of events. The book is loosely based on the life and times of Sir Ronald Ross, the Nobel Prize–winning scientist who achieved a breakthrough in malaria research in 1898. The novel was the recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997.
The Shadow Lines (1988) is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. It is a book that captures perspective of time and events, of lines that bring people together and hold them apart; lines that are clearly visible from one perspective and nonexistent from another; lines that exist in the memory of one, and therefore in another's imagination. A narrative built out of an intricate, constantly crisscrossing web of memories of many people, it never pretends to tell a story. Instead, it invites the reader to invent one, out of the memories of those involved, memories that hold mirrors of differing shades to the same experience.
Tabish Khair is an Indian English author and associate professor in the Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His books include Babu Fictions (2001), The Bus Stopped (2004), which was shortlisted for the Encore Award (UK) and The Thing About Thugs (2010), which has been shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Man Asian Literary Prize. His poem Birds of North Europe won first prize in the sixth Poetry Society All India Poetry Competition held in 1995. In 2022, he published a new Sci Fi novel, [The Body by the Shore].
The Glass Palace is a 2000 historical novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. The novel is set in Burma, Bengal, India, and Malaya, spans a century from the Third Anglo-Burmese War and the consequent fall of the Konbaung Dynasty in Mandalay, through the Second World War to late 20th century. Through the stories of a small number of privileged families, it illuminates the struggles that have shaped Burma, India and Malaya into the places they are today. It explores the various facets of the colonial period, including the economic fall of Burma, the rise of timber and rubber plantations, the moral dilemmas faced by Indians in the British Indian Army, and the devastating effects of World War II. Focusing mainly on the early 20th Century, it explores a broad range of issues ranging from the changing economic landscape of Burma and India, to pertinent questions about what constitutes a nation and how these change as society is swept along by the tide of modernity.
Sea of Poppies (2008) is a novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. It is the first volume of the Ibis trilogy. In the words of Rajnish Mishra, "the Ibis trilogy is Ghosh's most vehement indictment of the source of imperialism and colonialism." The second volume is River of Smoke.
The Crossword Book Award is an Indian book award hosted by Crossword Bookstores and their sponsors. The Award was instituted in 1998 by Indian book retailer Crossword with the intention of competing with The Booker Prize, Commonwealth Writers' Prize or The Pulitzer Prize.
River of Smoke (2011) is a novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh. It is the second volume of the Ibis trilogy.
The Hindu Literary Prize or The Hindu Best Fiction Award, established in 2010, is an Indian literary award sponsored by The Hindu Literary Review which is part of the newspaper The Hindu. It recognizes Indian works in English and English translation. The first year, 2010, the award was called The Hindu Best Fiction Award. Starting in 2018 a non-fiction category was included.
The Waterstones 11 was a literary book prize aimed at promoting debut authors, run and curated by British bookseller Waterstones. It ran from 2011–13. The list of 11 authors are selected from a list of 100 authors submitted by publishers. The prize, established in 2011, has included Orange Prize winner Téa Obreht's novel The Tiger's Wife, Man Booker Prize nominee Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman and the winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize for New Fiction, The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen.
Neel Mukherjee, FRSL is an Indian English-language writer based in London. He is the author of several critically acclaimed novels. He is also the brother of the television anchor and editor Udayan Mukherjee.
The Ibis trilogy is a work of historical fiction by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, consisting of the novels Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015). A work of postcolonial literature, the story is set across the Indian Ocean region during the 1830s in the lead-up to the First Opium War. It particularly focuses on the trade of opium between India and China and the trafficking of girmityas to Mauritius. The series has received critical acclaim and academic attention for its historical research, themes and ambition. A television series adaptation was announced to be in development in 2019.
Anjali Joseph is an Indian novelist. Her first novel, Saraswati Park (2010), earned her several awards, including the Betty Trask Prize and Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second novel, Another Country, was released in 2012. In 2010, she was listed by The Telegraph as one of the 20 best writers under the age of 40. Her third novel, The Living (2016), was shortlisted for the DSC Prize and is a tender, lyrical and often funny novel which shines a light on everyday life. Her fourth novel, Keeping in Touch, was published in India in 2021 by Context and in the UK in 2022 by Scribe.
Tom McEwan is a multiple award-winning Scottish master craftsman and fine bookbinder.
Flood of Fire is a 2015 novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh. Following the Sea of Poppies (2008) and River of Smoke (2011), the novel is the final installment of the Ibis trilogy, which concerns the 19th-century opium trade between India and China. The book was first published by the English publisher John Murray, and later by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States. The novel was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize and received the Crossword Book Jury Award in Fiction in 2015.
Patrick Denman Flanery is an American author and academic. As of 2023 he is a chair of creative writing at the University of Adelaide in Adelaide, South Australia. He is known for his 2012 novel, Absolution.
Sujan Mukherjee is an Indian actor who works in Bengali language films, television and theatre. In 2012 he made his directorial debut with the film Ghete Gho. He is an active Member of the renowned Theatre Group Chetana. On 22 February 2016 his directorial debut, in the field of Theatre, Ghashiram Kotwal, which is an adaptation on Marathi play, was premiered. In 2018 he directed Don: Taake Bhalo Laage an adaptation of Dale Wasserman's Don Quixote which was translated into Bengali by his father Arun Mukhopadhyay many years back. This play marked the re-entry of his brother and noted director Suman Mukhopadhyay as an actor after 25 years.