Description
Book SynopsisA breath-taking family story that will change the way you think of India
Trade ReviewIntensely engrossing . . . What [Taseer] has done with great intelligence and elegance is to deliver a novel of ideas in the guise of a very human story. -- Michael Prodger * Financial Times *
A formidable mix of the personal and the political . . . Taseer's wide and analytical perspective has something in common with contemporaries Amit Chaudhuri and Neel Mukherjee, but his style - at once highly intellectual and deeply poetic - is unique . . .
The Way Things Were is a substantive contribution to new writing from the subcontinent. -- Amanda Hopkinson * Independent *
The Ways Things Were shows [Taseer] to be both an accomplished novelist and commentator. In delving beneath the surface, he has vividly exposed the quarrels and quandaries of an India undergoing rapid historical and social change. -- Will Nicoll * Spectator *
An ambitious state-of-the-nation novel about the role of history in a contested present . . . Taseer . . . sensitively undercuts the seductions of nostalgia. -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times *
This is the sort of novel that gathers intelligence and power through repetition, incantation, and time. As the pages build . . . these characters grow into two of the most memorable creations in Indian fiction. These scenes have an aching power that Taseer amplifies with his exquisite, booming prose . . . as if Taseer has taken Naipaul and titrated him with Proust . . . He has written the best Indian novel of the last decade. -- Karan Mahajan * Los Angeles Review of Books *
