A FINE BALANCE BY ROHINTON MISTRY
A Fine Balance floored me; it was more emotionally affecting thanalmost any other book I've read. Mistry's sweeping, epic story, fantastic castof characters, and gorgeous sensory imagery paints a full-to-bursting portraitof India and its people. Dickensian in scope and devastating in impact, A Fine Balance is one of themasterpieces of the 20th century. A splendid tale ofcontemporary India that, in chronicling the sufferings of outcasts andinnocents trying to survive in the "State of Internal Emergency'' of the1970s, grapples with the great question of how to live in the face of death anddespair. Though Mistry is too fine a writer toindulge in polemics, this second novel is also a quietly passionate indictmentof a corrupt and ineluctably cruel society. India under Indira Gandhi hasbecome a country ruled by thugs who maim and kill for money and power. The fourprotagonists (all victims of the times) are: Dina, 40-ish, poor and widowedafter only three years of marriage; Maneck, the son of an old school friend ofDina's; and two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Om, members of the Untouchablecaste. For a few months, this unlikely quartet share a tranquil happiness in anameless city--a city of squalid streets teeming with beggars, wherepoliticians, in the name of progress, abuse the poor and the powerless. Dina,whose dreams of attending college ended when her father died, is now trying tosupport herself with seamstress work; Maneck, a tenderhearted boy, has beensent to college because the family business is failing; and the two tailorsfind work with Dina. Though the four survive encounters with various thugs andare saved from disaster by a quirky character known as the Beggarmaster, thetimes are not propitious for happiness. On a visit back home, Om and Ishvar areforcibly sterilized; Maneck, devastated by the murder of an activist classmate,goes abroad. But Dina and the tailors, who have learned to maintain a finebalance between hope and despair,'' keep going. A sweeping story, in athoroughly Indian setting, that combines Dickens's vivid sympathy for the poorwith Solzhenitsyn's controlled outrage, celebrating both the resilience of thehuman spirit and the searing heartbreak of failed dreams.
Please find the book athttps://www.craxme.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=329&highlight=Rohinton%2BMistry posted by [backcolor=rgb(229, 237, 242)]lapfin[/backcolor]
