Book cover for The Way Things Were

The Way Things Were

Synopsis

Details

12 February 2015
560 pages
9781447272731
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

Intensely engrossing . . . What [Taseer] has done with great intelligence and elegance is to deliver a novel of ideas in the guise of a very human story.
A formidable mix of the personal and the political . . . Taseer's wide and analytical perspective has something in common with contemporaries Amit Chaudhuri and Neel Mukherjee, but his style - at once highly intellectual and deeply poetic - is unique . . . The Way Things Were is a substantive contribution to new writing from the subcontinent.
The Ways Things Were shows [Taseer] to be both an accomplished novelist and commentator. In delving beneath the surface, he has vividly exposed the quarrels and quandaries of an India undergoing rapid historical and social change.
An ambitious state-of-the-nation novel about the role of history in a contested present . . . Taseer . . . sensitively undercuts the seductions of nostalgia.