Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017

In this tender, lyrical, and often funny novel, Anjali Joseph, author of Saraswati Park, shines a light on everyday life, illuminating its humour, beauty, and truth.

There is a certain number of breaths each of us have to take, and no amount of care or carelessness can alter that.

This is the story of two lives. Claire is a young single mother working in one of England’s last remaining shoe factories, her adult life formed by a teenage relationship. Is she ready to move on from memory and the routine of her days? Arun makes hand-sewn chappals at his home in Kolhapur. A recovered alcoholic, now a grandfather, he negotiates the newfound indignities of old age while returning in thought to the extramarital affair he had years earlier.

These are lives woven through with the ongoing discipline of work and the responsibility and tedium of family life. Lives laced with the joys of friendship, the pleasure of sex, and the redemptive kindness of one’s own children. This is the story of the living.

In this tender, lyrical and often funny novel, Anjali Joseph, author of Saraswati Park, shines a light on everyday life, illuminating its humour, beauty, and truth.