An Atlas of Impossible Longing: A Novel

Anuradha Roy

Apr 2011 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

“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.

Ratings and reviews

“The river will make this house its own. What are these grand houses but arrogance? My grandfather would boast of the Italian marble. That marble will be the river’s bed now. Fish will swim in and out of our finest teak shelves and nibble our ivory figurines. Frog will lay eggs in our English porcelain, water snakes will twine our pillars. The windows will stare into weeds, the ink from our papers will colour the water black, moss will ooze out of burst bedding, beds and chairs will float out like boats, the rooms will lie empty for fish to breed in them. Sharp lines of rain shot into the verandah. The breeze soaked his clothes and his spellbound face. His lips moved unheard. “The arrogance,” he whispered, “the arrogance.” (74) So begins one of the strong dramatic turns in "An Atlas of Impossible Longing", the debut American novel by Anuradha Roy. This is tragic and heartfelt story spans three generations of a Bengali family. It begins with the prosperous businessman Amulya, who builds a magnificent home which becomes a sort of prison for his wife, Kananbala. The story follows the path of their two sons, the daughter of the younger son, Bakul, and a young orphaned boy, Mukunda, who Amulya places in a home and sets up provisions for in his will. As Bakul and Mukunda’s lives become irreversibly intertwined,so too will readers in this hard to put down epic tale. Roy takes on the epic task of following this family saga with grace and lush attention to detail. The characters will come alive off the page even as the rich sensory details paint a picture with delicately woven brushstrokes. You will love the English neighbor and the inappropriate outbursts of the aging Kananbala. But, mostly, you will feel the connection between Bakul and Mukunda grow from childhood innocence through adolescence and the unending ties that will always bring them together. "An Atlas of Impossible Longing" will keep you turning pages. Just when you think there are no more twists and turns, Roy will surprise and delight you with more. The lyrical lines are enticing; the attention to detail, cinematic. The slow pace Roy uses to strip away the onion-like layers of this entangled family drama will grip the reader like a haunting song you will not want to get out of your head.

About the author

Anuradha Roy is the author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing, The Folded Earth, All The Lives We Never Lived, and Sleeping on Jupiter—which won the DSC Prize for Fiction 2016 and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2015. She lives in Ranikhet, India.