A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry

ISBN 10: 0571203620 / ISBN 13: 9780571203628

Published by Faber & Faber, London, 2001

About this Item

Faber & Faber, March 2001. Paperback. Very Good. Unmarked. Spine creased and lightly curved. Light dog-ear to front cover. Some discoloration to page edges. Sticker from Giggle Bookshop, Madras to rear cover. A nice reading copy. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. 752 pages. 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. Set in mid-1970s India, A Fine Balance is a subtle and compelling narrative about these four unlikely characters who come together soon after the government declares a State of Internal Emergency.

Seller Inventory # RWARE0000003330

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Fine Balance
• Publisher: Faber & Faber, London
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571203620
• ISBN 13: 9780571203628
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 0.8 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

At 600 pages, Mistry's stunning second novel looks intimidating, yet this moving tale of four people caught up in India's 1975 state of emergency -- when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution in order to hold on to power following a scandal -- is an incredibly detailed, compelling read that sweeps you along from the opening pages and is over far too soon.Though it takes place in a time of political upheaval and chaos, A Fine Balance is not a political diatribe. Instead, it is a beautiful and compassionate portrait of the resiliency of the human spirit when faced with death, despair, and unconscionable suffering. Set in an unnamed city by the sea, it is the story of four disenfranchised strangers -- a widow, a young student, and two tailors -- who are forced by their impoverished circumstances to share a cramped apartment. Initially distrustful of one another, Dina, Maneck, Ishvar, and Om gradually build loving, familial bonds and learn together "to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair" in a society suddenly turned inhumanly cruel and corrupt.

From the Back Cover

"Astonishing. . . . A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life." --Wall Street Journal

"A serious and important work . . . the product of high intelligence and passionate conviction." --New York Review of Books

"Monumental. . . . Few have caught the real sorrow and inexplicable strength of India, the unaccountable crookedness and sweetness, as well as Mistry." --Pico Iyer, Time

"Those who continue to harp on the decline of the novel . . . ought to consider Rohinton Mistry. He needs no infusion of magic realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical." --The New York Times