The Way Things Were
05 December 2014Imprint: Pan Macmillan India
Synopsis
'An ambitious state-of-the-nation novel' Sunday Times
When Skanda's father Toby dies, estranged from Skanda's mother and from the India he once loved, it falls to Skanda to return his body to his birthplace. This is a journey that takes him halfway around the world and deep within three generations of his family, whose fractures, frailties and toxic legacies he has always...
Details
05 December 2014576 pages
9781447294115Imprint: Pan Macmillan India
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.Michael Prodger, Financial Times
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.Amanda Hopkinson, Independent
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.Will Nicoll, Spectator
An ambitious state-of-the-nation novel about the role of history in a contested present . . . Taseer . . . sensitively undercuts the seductions of nostalgia.Phil Baker, Sunday Times
