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The Lives of Others

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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee, read by Raj Ghatak.

***Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014***
***Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2014***
***WINNER of the Encore Award 2014***

‘Ma, I feel exhausted with consuming, with taking and grabbing and using. I am so bloated that I feel I cannot breathe any more. I am leaving to find some air, some place where I shall be able to purge myself, push back against the life given me and make my own. I feel I live in a borrowed house. It’s time to find my own… Forgive me…’


Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is this note …

The ageing patriarch and matriarch of his family, the Ghoshes, preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. More than poisonous rivalries among sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the family business, this is a family unravelling as the society around it fractures. For this is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change: the chasm between the generations, and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider.

Ambitious, rich and compassionate The Lives of Others anatomises the soul of a nation as it unfolds a family history. A novel about many things, including the limits of empathy and the nature of political action, it asks: how do we imagine our place amongst others in the world? Can that be reimagined? And at what cost? This is a novel of unflinching power and emotional force.

 Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

Masterful … His fierce intelligence and sophisticated storytelling combine to produce an unforgettable portrait of one family riven by the forces of history and their own desires. (Patrick Flanery)
Rich and engrossing … Consistently vivid and well realised, it confidently covers a great deal of varied social terrain. … Unfailingly interesting (Theo Tait)
Very ambitious and very successful. … One of Mukherjee's great gifts is precisely his capacity to imagine the lives of others. … Neel Mukherjee terrifies and delights us simultaneously (A S Byatt)
Deeply affecting and ambitious ... In startling imagery that sears itself into the mind, The Lives of Others excellently exposes the gulf between rich and poor, young and old, tradition and modernity, us and them, showing how acts of empathy are urgently needed to bridge the divides. (Anita Sethi)
Neel Mukherjee has written an outstanding novel: compelling, compassionate and complex, vivid, musical and fierce.
Full of acute, often uncomfortable and angry, observations, The Lives of Others is a picture of a family in all its disunity, and beyond it a city and country, on the brink of disaster.
A Seth-ian narrative feast with dishes to spare ... a graphic reminder that the bourgeois Indian culture western readers so readily idealize is sustained at terrible human cost (Patrick Gale)
Expansive and often brilliant… Mukherjee spares the reader nothing…yet his command of storytelling is so astounding, he draws the reader into places they would prefer not to look (Claire Allfree)
The writing is unfailingly beautiful … Resembles a tone poem in its dazzling orchestration of the crescendo of domestic racket. His eye is as acute as his ear: the physicality of people and objects is delineated with a hyper-aesthetic vividness …. (Jane Shilling)
Neel Mukherjee has given us a picture of India that cuts through history, social classes and regions but centers on a nouveau pauvre family. Every scene is rendered with a Tolstoyan clarity and compassion.
All stars
Most relevant
Well read and touching story spread over generations of a Calcutta family with some very dark secrets.

Real people

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I loved The Lowland and I loved this epic and gripping family saga. Thus, I could not take off my earphones. And my compliments to Raj Ghatak. His lively narration is easy to follow even for me not that familiar with the Indian accent.

Gripping

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Really enjoyed this audiobook, it's a great insight into the webs a family weaves, especially a family entrenched in tradition, finding it hard to adjust to new ideas. It's pretty difficult to get into but I persisted as many of the best books are.

The narration was perfect for the setting, I was never distracted by it, which to me is the mark of a good story teller: he performed without pulling the spotlight from the narrative.

Not a feel-good listen!

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What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I would grade it 2 as it has potential but it is so varied.

What could Neel Mukherjee have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Cut out the mundane a bit more.

Have you listened to any of Raj Ghatak’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No I have not.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Lives of Others?

I cut the last two thirds by not listening to them.

Any additional comments?

Hard work that I could not do while driving.

Griping start dull middle never got to end

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