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Genres linked with this book
  1. Contemporary
  2. Fiction

A Fine Balance

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future. As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
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3 Ratings
Sakhi Gundeti Reviewed on: 05-01-2022
A maelstrom of emotions in one book

- The 600-page novel is full of tragedies and touching happy moments. Well, the tragedies are overpowering. The titular fine balance is between hope and despair, between giving up and striding ahead, between desperate imagination and insensitive reality. - The author has done a commendable job in shaping all the characters. They're well explored throughout the novel. A major chunk of the novel is about the background of the characters which might seem unnecessary at first. But it's due to the backgrounds that we connect to the characters and stick with them all the way to the end. - The ending hits you hard. You've been on a long journey with all the characters and leaving them behind becomes difficult. It's unfathomable how their lives turn out to be; you convince yourself it's a piece of fiction but you know it can be true. Realist fiction is derived from reality. - Read this book, it's worth all your time.