Neel Mukerjee

The Lives of Others

 

The extended middle-class Ghosh family in Calcutta, India lives under one roof, but societal stratifications and tensions separate family members, both emotionally and literally, as they live on different floors of the house. Interspersed within the third person account of the family are letters written by an estranged Ghosh son describing his experience with a farmworker uprising.  Despite blatant inequities, the characters’ fates are not necessarily determined by their wealth, class, or caste.