An exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man's life from his 1935 birth in a small village in India to his death from covid in 2020.
Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. His mother, while pregnant, nearly dies from a cobra bite. And this is only the first of many challenges in store for Jadu. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He becomes a historian. He has a daughter, Jugnu, who grows up to be a television journalist and then escapes her marriage for a career in the United States. And he sees currents of huge change sweep across India, from Independence to Partition, Gandhi to Modi, the Mahabharata to Somerset Maugham, in ways that Jadu is both apart from and can't help but represent.
Piercing, fleet-footed, and undeniably resonant, here is a novel from a singularly gifted writer about how we tell stories and write history, how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements, how no single life is without consequence.
