Love in the most improbable circumstances. Its geographical setting is precise and particular, but its real setting is the soul. It is peopled by souls of the present as well as the departed, souls both human and animal. Souls that have been broken by the world we live in and then mended by love.
A monumental new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The God of Small Things, to be published on the 20th anniversary of that landmark book 'How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.'
In a city graveyard a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people that attended her funeral. In a second-floor apartment, watched over by a small owl, a lone woman feeds a baby gecko dead. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.
Arundhati Roy's new novel gives us a glorious cast of unforgettable characters, caught up in the tide of history, each in search of a place of safety. Told with a whisper, with a shout, with tears and with a laugh, it is a love story and a provocation. Its heroes, present and departed, human and animal, have been broken by the world we live in and then mended by love. And for this reason, they will never surrender.
