All the Lives We Never Lived

Bol Partner

'[Roy's] mastery of detail ties an intimate domestic drama to national history, offering a portrait of one family's troubles with desire and loss that speaks to the more universal struggles for personal and political freedom.' 'TimeFrom the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present-day about a son's quest to uncover the truth about his mother. In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. The man was in fact German, but in small'town India in those days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British. So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, a rebellious, alluring artist who abandons parenthood and marriage to follow her primal desire for freedom. Though freedom may be stirring in the air of India, across the world the Nazis have risen to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, a German artist from Gayatri's past seeks her out. His arrival ignites passions she has long been forced to suppress. What follows is her life as pieced together by her son, a journey that takes him through India and Dutch'held Bali. Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, he comes to understand his long'lost mother, and the connections between strife at home and a war'torn universe overtaken by patriotism. With her signature 'precise and poetic' (The Independent) writing, Anuradha Roy's All the Lives We Never Lived is a spellbinding and emotionally powerful saga about family, identity, and love.

Bol

**NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD** "A writer of great subtlety and intelligence . . . a beautifully written and compelling story of how families fall apart and what remains of the aftermath" Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018 "The book everyone is talking about for the summer**" Lorraine Candy, Sunday Times** In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman" - so begins the story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist's instinct for freedom. Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri's town, opening up for her the vision of other possible lives. What took Myshkin's mother from India to Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar environment? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism. Anuradha Roy's enthralling novel is a powerful parable for our times, telling the story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present. Impassioned, elegiac, and gripping, it brims with the same genius that has brought Roy's earlier fiction international renown. "One of India's greatest living authors" - O, The Oprah Magazine "Roy's writing is a joy" - Financial Times