# Paperback: 624 pages
# Publisher: Vintage (November 30, 2001)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 140003065X
# ISBN-13: 978-1400030651
# Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.8 x 1.2 inches
After months spent reading it, last night I finished this 600 page novel, which was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize, and much to my surprise, I found myself crying at the conclusion of this story. I can’t remember the last time I actually cried reading a book. I can’t say I enjoyed all of this novel, because some of what it describes is upsetting and difficult to read, but having now finished it I can say it is a very touching book, and very memorable. It tells the story of four poor individuals in India in the 1970’s, whose lives become intertwined. The writing style is not snazzy, rather it is very clear and simple. I don’t want to give away the plot, but the book’s theme is that there is a fine balance between hope and despair. The course of this theme is so well navigated throughout the book, all the way through to the very last page, that the ideas, I’m sure, will stay imprinted on me for a very long time
Book Description
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers–a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village–will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
About the Author
Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives near Toronto. His first novel, Such a Long Journey, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received, among other awards, the Governor General’s Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book of the Year. A Fine Balance is his second novel, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction, the Giller Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize as well as a Booker Prize finalist. Mistry is also the author of Swimming Lessons, a collection of short stories.
One Comment
Write a Comment»I love Rohinton Mistry’s work.. his way of making simple and mundane events of life- look different, from a different perspective. And his characters are very much like the people we meet in real life- only if we care to look at them from different angle, each person is an epic in himself.
I have read almost everything written by him..and waiting to read more.