Reading Neel Mukherjee's 'The Lives of Others' felt like an exploration into the author's own beliefs of India's communist factions. Interlaced with the story of a Calcutta family’s social lives, it traces the symptoms leading up to the Naxalite revolution of 1969. The book is rich in language and seeped in cultural nuances. It's no surprise that it was deemed worthy of a Booker nomination.
Mukherjee’s language is simple, yet powerful and he weaves a story with the many superstitions and social dogmas of Indian society. It’s not a roller-coaster ride of a book with plots and sub-plots. He builds characters and gives adequate time to make them impressionable to the reader. The language makes this book a compelling read.
Mukherjee’s language is simple, yet powerful and he weaves a story with the many superstitions and social dogmas of Indian society. It’s not a roller-coaster ride of a book with plots and sub-plots. He builds characters and gives adequate time to make them impressionable to the reader. The language makes this book a compelling read.
Like most books, I felt it could be about a 100-pages shorter, but I particularly enjoyed how he elaborated on the many revolving characters in the book. He painstakingly navigates the reader through the many layers each character has and builds a compelling social narrative. It's a book about ideology and how his characters - meek, strong, courageous and cowards, all come together to tell you their stories.
Read it, because it’s about an India you might not have heard much of. It’s about the story of a rich family with bigotry and how one boy left all the luxuries of life to join a movement he believed in.
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