A State of Freedom
A Novel

I began reading this novel last week when a Guardian review tipped it as a Booker Prize contender. In the end it didn't make a fiercely competitive longlist and I can kind of see why. But in spite of some minor flaws, there is a lot to like about it. The book is a collection of five interconnected ta......more

Neel Mukherjee may have narrowly missed out on winning the Booker Prize when his previous novel “The Lives of Others” was shortlisted in 2014, but someone ought to give this writer a crown just for writing such impactful openings in his novels. In both that book and his new novel “A State of Freedom......more

They look out of the bus window and what the hell is that a guy with a bear on a chain? Where? Can’t see anymore. Well, it looked like a guy with a bear on a chain. Yes, it was…. And his story is the third of these five interlinked-kind-of (see above) sorry tales of modern India. The guy with the be......more

As I was reading the last pages of this uncomfortable and upsetting novel, my eyes were streaming. My grief was overwhelming. What story set in India is easy to read? E. M. Forster's Passage to India, depicting British racism and the confused heroine nearly destroying a native Indian man's life becau......more

This interview gives an excellent perspective on some of Mukherjee’s inspirations: [URL not allowed] The book, both in title, structure and content is inspired by V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State It is a wonderfully formally audacious book. He has three novellas bookended by a......more