'The Lowland'

A sweeping saga spanning four generations weaves itself through the bustling, pell-mell metropolis that is Calcutta and its antipode - a calm orderly small-town in Rhode Island, USA. This is Calcutta of the Coffee House, Park Street, Presidency College, "together they took in the stone buildings, with their decrepit grandeur, that lined the streets. Their tired columns, their crumbling cornices, their sullied shades."

An immensely evocative narrative, the reader is caught up in the global events of the late 1960s – the Paris student revolt of 1968, the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations at Berkeley campus in California, Mao, Che Guevera and Castro and the revolutionary book of its day – 'Wretched of the Earth' by Frantz Fanon. In this anti-establishment scenario, we encounter the restless and volatile Udayan a committed member of the West Bengal Naxalite movement. Killed by the police, the pensive and responsible elder brother Subash marries Udayan's young pregnant widow Gauri. They move to the USA.

In a reversal of stereotyped expectations, Lahiri explores the unconventional and non-stereotype role of the mother Gauri in her distant relationship with her daughter Bela. The reader may ponder who fits into the conventional role of parenthood? Gauri? Or Subash the uncle who adopts fatherhood and makes the parental identity entirely his own. Bela grows up in the belief that Subash is her father. Gauri leaves it to Subash to divulge the truth to Bela.

Upon the revelation, Bela leaves the home. A week later, she calls. "Baba? He had heard her. He'd heard her still calling him this." Understated in language and elegantly subtle in style, the narrative embodies 'less is more.' In a long journey of loss and discovery, of complexities and sensitivities that delve deep into the human heart, here is a deeply satisfying novel that stays with the reader long after the last page.