A chronicle of deportation and incarceration
The reviewer is an associate professor of English, Tarakeswar Degree College, University of Burdwan.
Man Booker Prize shortlisted novelist Neel Mukherjee touches upon the subjects of displacement and migration in his new book which will hit bookstores on July 6.
"A State of Freedom", published by Penguin Random House, is a novel of multiple narratives and explores the urge to escape the life we are given for something better.
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.
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Moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, the novel delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life, the book's blurb says.
'A State of Freedom' prises open the central, defining events of our century – displacement and migration – but not as you imagine them, it adds.
London-based Mukherjee is the author of two novels "A Life Apart" (2010), which won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for best novel, and "The Lives of Others" (2014), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the Encore Prize for best second novel.
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