At a time of political turmoil, the lives of four strangers collide. Rohinton Mistry’s epic masterpiece is set in India in the 1970s.

‘You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.’ In an unnamed city by the sea in mid-1970s India, a State of Internal Emergency has been declared. In the tiny flat of the widowed Dina Dalal, Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, tailors who have been forced from their village into the city, and Maneck Kohlah, a young student from a hill-station near the Himalayas, are painfully constructing new lives, which become entwined in circumstances no one could have foreseen.

Shortlisted
The Booker Prize 1996
Published by
Faber & Faber
Publication date

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Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry

About the Author

Rohinton Mistry is the author of three novels, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a collection of short stories.
More about Rohinton Mistry

Other nominated books by Rohinton Mistry

Family Matters
Such a Long Journey