What happens when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into? A State of Freedom prises open the central, defining events of our century-displacement and migration-but not as you imagine them. Five characters, in very different circumstances from a domestic cook in Mumbai to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city-find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more. Moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives-formally daring, fierce but full of pity-delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
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Penguin
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Neel Mukherjee is the author A Life Apart (2010), which won the Writers Guild of Britain award for best fiction; The Lives of Others (2014), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and received the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award for best second novel; and A State of Freedom (2018), which was a New York Times ‘100 Notable Books of the Year’, and a Kirkus, National Public Radio, and New York Public Library book of the year in the USA. His book for the Cahier Series is called Avian (2020). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and divides his time between London and Cambridge, MA.
A book full of nuances and possibilities; horrifying and empathetic at the same time. The ending is inimitable. Compulsory reading for everyone who claims to understand literature.