Rohinton Mistry

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.

It is Bombay in 1971, the year India went to war over what was to become Bangladesh. A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Firozsha Baag is an apartment building in Bombay. Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new.

Rohinton Mistry’s enthralling novel is at once a domestic drama and an intently observed portrait of present-day Bombay in all its vitality and corruption. At the age of seventy-nine, Nariman Vakeel, already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, breaks an ankle and finds himself wholly dependent on his family. His step-children, Coomy and Jal, have a spacious apartment (in the inaptly named Chateau Felicity), but are too squeamish and resentful to tend to his physical needs. Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a small, crowded home. Their decision will test not only their material resources but, in surprising ways, all their tolerance, compassion, integrity, and faith. Sweeping and intimate, tragic and mirthful, Family Matters is a work of enormous emotional power.

وُضع هذا العمل في أواسط السبعينيات في الهند. يُخبر قصة أربعة أشخاص ارتبطت حياة كل منهم بحياة الآخر في زمن الاضطراب السياسي الذي حدث بعد إعلان الحكومة حالة الطوارئ الداخلية. وفي أيام موحشة ومليئة بالأمل، أصبحت ظروف هؤلاء الأشخاص وحياتهم متشابكة بطرائق لا يمكن لأحد توقعها. إنها أكثر من رواية هي نثر حيّ بالصور الصابرة على الألم والصعوبات، وبشخصيات لا يمكن نسيانها تصور الأسى الحقيقي في الهند، كل ذلك عبّر عنه ميستري بتعاطف شديد، وحس فكاهة، ونفاذ بصيرة. قالوا عن الرواية: "رائعة رشيقة وضاءة. على غرار الكتابات الأدبية العظيمة، تغير فهمنا للحياة". صحيفة "الغارديان"، المملكة المتحدة "تملك هذه الرواية الجرأة على تذكيرنا، فرداً فرداً، بما نحن عليه، وطمأنتنا، إنها مستمرة في تقدير الروح البشرية المتألقة التي لا يمكن إخمادها. صحيفة "غلوب إند مايل" "رائعة شامخة لكاتب نابغة...". صحيفة "ذي إنديبندنت"، المملكة المتحدة