This Man Booker Prize finalist is a โsplendid novelโ about siblings and their very different lives in India and America (The Wall Street Journal).
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Uma, the plain spinster daughter of a close-knit Indian family, is trapped at home, smothered by her overbearing parents and their traditionsโunlike her ambitious younger sister, who has made a โgoodโ marriage and managed to escape. Meanwhile their brother Arun, the disappointing son and heir, is studying in America, living in a Massachusetts suburb with the Patton familyโwhere he finds himself bewildered by the culture that surrounds himย .ย .ย .
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โSuch witty writingย .ย .ย . You take its suffering characters to heart.โ โThe Boston Globe
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โStunningย .ย .ย . Looks gently but without sentimentality at an Indian family that, despite Western influence, is bound by Eastern traditions.โ โPublishers Weekly (starred review)
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โDesaiโs characters are wonderfully, fallibly human as they wend their way through the maze of everyday domestic tensions.โ โSan Francisco Chronicle