Author: Nayantara Sahgal
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 301
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788172233754
Description
New Delhi, one month, after the declaration of the Emergency, is the setting for this novel - an ironic, tender and exquisitely crafted study of India and its people in the aftermath of Independence.
The emergency in India meant many things to many people - profit and power for some; jail for others. For idealists like Sonali it meant the end of a dream. For opportunists like Dev, it means a chance to quit his ailing father's business and make it on his own as a leader of the New Entrepreneurs.
Rich like us is many individual histories, and many voices, in one - a compelling and vivid tapestry of India's past and present. Above all it is the story of Rose the Cockney mem-sahib, brought by the worldly Ram from London forty years before to a family that neither wants nor welcomes her.
In Nayantara Sahgal's tale, with its humor and tragedy, is mirrored some of the grandeur and folly of the Indian experience itself.
COMMENTS:
The Novel which teems with the actualities of life in India - corruption, injustice, bureaucratic finagling - is wonderfully set apart by a fine, clear, disenchanted eye and an acerbic moral intelligence that is devastating without raising its voice. - - Publishers Weekly
The flow of masterly novels that manage to bring alive the Indian social and political world of post Emergency Delhi . . And the rich harvest that it brings to the reader is one of the most packed and exciting of modern fiction. Sahgal, of course, is foremost in her garnering of the horror, humor and humanity of this fascinating age. - - Sir Angus Wilson