Neel Mukherjee: A Bengal bloodline

Indian author Neel Mukherjee’s will be in Bantry on Thursday to read from his Booker-listed

ONE of the characters in Neel Mukherjee’s Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, The Lives of Others, has been left on the shelf. Her name is Chhaya and she’s the only daughter of the Ghosh family, whose grip on the upper rungs of the social ladder in late-1960s Calcutta is loosening dramatically.

At first, Chhaya’s parents are optimistic of finding her a good match, but as the number of suitors begin to dwindle with each passing year — from 10 a year, to four and finally to one every two or three years — they begin to set the bar lower, especially as 30, “the point of no return”, looms.