The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry

Reader Score

93%

93% of readers

recommend this book

Oprah's Book Club
Included in
Oprah's Book Club
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall masters from Balzac to Dickens, this magnificant novel caputures 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 cast violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the cahracters 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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Vintage
  • Publish Date: Nov 30th, 2001
  • Pages: 624
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.20in - 1.30in - 0.98lb
  • EAN: 9781400030651
  • Categories: LiteraryHistorical - GeneralSagas

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Mercury Pictures Presents, Anthony Marra
Book Cover for: Aria, Nazanine Hozar
Book Cover for: Saturday, Ian McEwan
Book Cover for: A Crossing of Hearts, Michel Tremblay
Book Cover for: Transatlantic, Colum McCann
Book Cover for: The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie
Book Cover for: City of Darkness, City of Light, Marge Piercy
Book Cover for: London: The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd
Book Cover for: Dreams of Joy, Lisa See
Book Cover for: London: The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd
Book Cover for: Waterland: Introduction by Tim Binding, Graham Swift
Book Cover for: An Orphan's Wish: A gripping and emotional historical novel, Lizzie Page
Book Cover for: The Ration Book Baby: An utterly heart-wrenching and uplifting World War 2 saga, Ellie Curzon
Book Cover for: The Note: An utterly heartbreaking and completely gripping World War Two novel, Carly Schabowski
Book Cover for: The Secret She Kept: A gripping and moving World War 2 historical novel, Carly Schabowski

About the Author

Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives near Toronto. His first novel, Such a Long Journey, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received, among other awards, the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book of the Year. A Fine Balance is his second novel, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction, the Giller Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize as well as a Booker Prize finalist. Mistry is also the author of Swimming Lessons, a collection of short stories.

More books by Rohinton Mistry

Book Cover for: Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry
Book Cover for: Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry
Book Cover for: Swimming Lessons: Swimming Lessons: and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag, Rohinton Mistry
Book Cover for: A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

What people are saying

vanityfair.com
oprah.com
Show more

Praise for this book

"Astonishing. . . . A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life." --Wall Street Journal

"A serious and important work . . . the product of high intelligence and passionate conviction." --New York Review of Books

"Monumental. . . . Few have caught the real sorrow and inexplicable strength of India, the unaccountable crookedness and sweetness, as well as Mistry." --Pico Iyer, Time

"Those who continue to harp on the decline of the novel . . . ought to consider Rohinton Mistry. He needs no infusion of magic realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical." --The New York Times