Neel Mukherjee is the author of two previous 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.
An extraordinary, compassionate, complex, hard-hitting wonder of a
book. It is in a class of its own.
*Rose Tremain*
Neel Mukherjee's breathtaking A State of Freedom is that rarest,
most wonderful of things: a book both literarily dextrous, full of
unforgettable scenes, images, language, and characters, as well as
a furious, unsparing, clear-eyed study of how a society's gross
inequities of money and power demean and deform the human
condition. The most astonishing and brilliant novel I have read in
a long, long time.
*Hanya Yanagihara*
Fans of Neel Mukherjee expect that his books will be exceptional
and once again he has produced just that. A State of Freedom is
formally audacious, vividly observed, and deeply imagined.
Unsentimental yet full of heart, grimly real yet mysteriously
dreamlike, with characters who continue to live their complicated
lives long after you've turned the last page. Just a beautiful,
beautiful piece of work.
*Karen Joy Fowler*
A State of Freedom is an extraordinary achievement. Subtle and
multi-layered, it's a study of the brutality of social divisions,
written with tremendous tenderness; a work that insists on the
dignity of figures obliged to lead undignified lives. A powerful,
troubling novel. The moment I finished it, I began it again.
*Sarah Waters*
A State of Freedom is a novel like no other -- its prose is so
rich, unequivocally precise and graceful that it allows Mukherjee
to illustrate the most horrific of experiences with stunning
compassion. A State of Freedom is more than a novel—it is an
immersive experience. He writes like a painter, his language is his
palette, one reminiscent of the late Howard Hodgkin's. Mukherjee
brings to life the variation of India’s cities and towns in a dense
multi-layered world where modern life, by accident or intention,
tears at traditions that are centuries old. Throughout we are
reminded of how little power many have over their lives and of
emotional and financial economies so fragile that something as
small as a single egg can carry great weight.
*A.M. Homes*
This is a great hymn to poor, scabby humanity—a devastating
portrait of poverty and the inhumanity of the rich to the poor. A
masterpiece!
*Edmund White*
an extraordinary account of the tenacious will to survive… He seeds
his tales with images of unexpected beauty… Freedom here is
relative, complicated, fissured and often won at another’s
expense
*The Times*
Neel Mukherjee shows himself to be one of those contemporary
authors who invites readers to make connections between seemingly
disparate story strands… Combined with Mukherjee’s rich realisation
of the novel’s individual elements, this indeterminacy makes A
State of Freedom a powerful, memorable treatment of a theme too
often reduced to uninvolving didacticism
*Sunday Times*
The beauty of Mukherjee’s prose sucks the reader into an
alternative world, where misery, deprivation and the struggle to
exist another day are normal
*Daily Mail*
Mukherjee… homes in on the restless, the disinherited, the socially
trapped… Mercilessly observant, he does not spare the reader but
leavens scenes of savagery, squalor and despair with moments of
rainbow vividness, all the more striking for the muddy, cacophonous
backdrop from which they are brought forth… In a significant and
porous work, Mukherjee gives congruence and visibility to these
fractured, hidden lives
*New Statesman*
He does what good novelists should, which is to hold up a mirror to
society and remind people that what passes for normal is often
barbaric. His quiet observation is effective – and damning
*Economist*
Set in contemporary India, technically daring, deeply
compassionate, it’s a powerful, pertinent novel about migration and
social injustice
*Guardian*
Each story is intimate and universal, concrete and elusive… A State
of Freedom is ambitious, and it succeeds on all levels
*Irish Times*
Narrated with the precise realism that we have come to expect of
Neel Mukherjee’s novels… A State of Freedom resonates with
intricate and disturbing echoes… Mukherjee has created an India
that is always graspable and always elusive
*Times Literary Supplement*
In Mukherjee’s hands familiar fare is elevated by his empathy for
the poor and the journalistic efforts he undertakes to understand
them… his best work yet… This bleak and entirely justified vision
of modern India is what binds together Mukherjee’s stories and
indeed his oeuvre
*Financial Times*
A compelling read set in contemporary India that explores the
attempts of five characters, each in different circumstances, to
exchange the life they are leading for something better
*Bookseller*
A brilliant novel, deeply compassionate and painterly, reminding me
of Howard Hodgkin’s paintings. Mukherjee brings to life the colours
and sounds of a place where modern life is constantly crashing
against tradition
*Observer*
Bleak and beautifully written
*Observer*
Mukherjee’s characters are so well drawn and their plights so
affecting that we stop quibbling over how to categorise the book
and simply lose ourselves in masterful storytelling… Random bouts
of cruelty… unfold in electrifying prose
*Herald*
Very powerful, very well written
*Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4*
A thing of wonder… does what a great novel should do… one of the
most wonderful novels I’ve read for ages and ages… such wonderful
high calibre writing’
*Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4*
Brilliant… I couldn’t put it down…everything about it rang true… so
gripping, so thrilling
*Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4*
A splendidly rich and affirmative novel
*Scotsman*
An especially searing account of state oppression and Communist
terror… everything is held together by Mukherjee’s wonderfully
inventive prose style
*Prospect*
An exceptional portrait of modern India – and one of the best
novels this year
*Metro*
Mukherjee confronts us with the deranged performances of both
master and slave… A State of Freedom’s artfully handled piecing
together of story fragments is held in tension by a counterforce of
textual disintegration
*Spectator*
This novel paints a vivid picture of modern India, its beauty and
its benightedness, examining the relationship between identity and
migration. Mukherjee is pitch-perfect in his descriptions of Indian
life and unsparing in chronicling the poverty, deprivation and
superstition that blights the nation. The book’s themes are
important and the writing powerful, in places shocking
*Country & Town House*
Harsh and vibrant… Mukherjee’s deep knowledge of India and the
West, allied to his never-failing curiosity about the ties that
both bind us and separate us, makes him an outstanding chronicler
of Bengali life, seen from within and without… In an age when so
many fiction writers flimflam around in a cloud of unknowing,
Mukherjee has an eagle’s eye for the truth
*New Statesman*
It’s a brave and frequently devastating novel whose themes of
displacement and dehumanisation are all too timely
*Observer*
The last book that made my heart race? That’d be Neel Mukherjee’s A
State of Freedom: completely propulsive and horrifying and
astonishing
*Guardian*
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