One Day

Author: Ardashir Vakil
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670049611

Description

‘One day equals a lifetime. It’s as if everything important that’s ever happened to you finds its way into some recess of the brain where it reverberates for the rest of your days.’

One Day is a twenty-four-hour journey into the lives and minds of Ben Tennyson, his wife Priya Patnaik, and their small boy, nicknamed Whacka. Something has gone wrong with Ben’s marriage of eight years to the enigmatic Priya, a thirty-one year-old Indian Londoner. In the course of the day—which happens to be Whacka’s third birthday—we learn about a crisis that has brought turmoil to their marriage.

Ardashir Vakil paints an unforgettable picture of the fin de siècle in one of the great cities of the world. How has this couple come to such an impasse in the middle of their lives? What are their dreams made of? What will happen to them? What has happened to London?

Ambitious, comic and deep, One Day holds up a mirror to our lives, our cities, our relationships, our personal histories, and our children.