An Atlas of Impossible Longing

"This is why we read fiction at all" raves the Washington Post: Family life meets historical romance in this critically acclaimed, "gorgeous, sweeping novel" (Ms Magazine) about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else, marking the signal American debut of an award-winning writer who richly deserves her international acclaim.

On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family lives in solitude in their vast new house. Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost--and he knows that he must return.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 04/05/2011
ISBN: 9781451608625
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 8.42h x 5.86w x 0.79d

Review Citations: Booklist 03/01/2011 pg. 24
Entertainment Weekly 04/22/2011 pg. 103
New Yorker (The) 04/25/2011 pg. 79
Publishers Weekly 01/17/2011
Library Journal 02/15/2011 pg. 101
New York Times Book Review 06/26/2011 pg. 11
New York Times Book Review 07/03/2011 pg. 22