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, Anajli Joseph, author of Saraswati Park, shines a light on everyday life, illuminating its humour, beauty, and truth.

Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, this is a superb second novel from the author of the multiple-award winning ‘Saraswati Park’. Twenty-something Leela is trying to figure out what to do next, who to fall in love with and where she belongs in the world. The problem is that no matter where she goes – Paris, London, Bombay – or what she does – teaching or temping, dating or committing – life doesn’t appear to offer any straightforward answers. A poignant, evocative journey over two continents and through the adult spheres of work, sex and convenient friendships, Another Country is about growing up, moving on and discovering that what you really want is very different from what you thought it would be.

A tremendous first novel from an exciting young author recently chosen as one of the Telegraph's '20 under 40' best UK writers. Famous for its electric chaos, the city of Bombay also accommodates pockets of calm. In one such space works Mohan, a contemplative man who has spent his life observing people from his seat as a letter-writer outside the main post office. But Mohan's lack of engagement with the world has caused a thawing of his marriage. At this delicate moment Mohan - and his wife, Lakshmi - are joined at their home in Saraswati Park by their nephew, Ashish, a sexually uncertain 19-year-old who has to repeat his final year in college. As the novel unfolds, the lives of each of the three characters are thrown into relief by the comical frustrations of family life: annoying relatives, unspoken yearnings and unheard grievances. When Lakshmi loses her only brother, she leaves Bombay for a relative's home to mourn not only the death of a sibling but also the vital force of her marriage. Ashish, meanwhile, embarks on an affair with a much richer boy in his college and, not long afterwards, succumbs to the overtures of his English tutor. As Mohan scribbles away in the margins of the sort of books he secretly hopes to write one day, he worries about whether his wife will return, what will become of Ashish, and if he himself will ever find his own voice to write from the margins about the centre of which he will never be a part.

From award-winning writer Anjali Joseph, a compelling new novel about a dysfunctional love affair. Meet Ved, a British investor heading back to his Indian roots with a business proposition: a lightbulb called the everlasting Lucifer. Meet Keteki, an art curator with a nomadic lifestyle, on her way home to Assam. In Heathrow airport, on the way to Mumbai, their paths cross, sparking a love affair that soon turns into an intricate power game - and a complicated journey towards intimacy.