In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman

So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist’s instinct for freedom. Anuradha Roy’s deeply moving novel tells the story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present. Its scale is matched by its power as a parable of our times.

This is why you read fiction at all – Marie Arana, Washington Post

Roy’s prose does not hit a single wrong note: its restrained beauty sings off the page – Neel Mukherjee, Time Magazine