excellent, bought copies for family as soon as i finished ( )

This is the best book I have read in awhile. 700+ pages were no obstacle: I finished it within days. Mistry has that true author's touch so invisible to the reader's eye, that he yanks him/her right into the midst of the story itself. He doesn't flinch from reality--this book is chock-full of heart-wrenching, depressing stuff--but at the same time, his overarching message is one of perseverance and the inherent value of LIFE. Characters like Ishvar, Om, Dina, and Maneck will stay with me for a very very long time, because I learned something from each one of them about how life probably ISn't but SHOULD BE.

Thanks to Mistry and his unbelievable talents, I now understand India and, with it, the world far better than I did before I first came across this book. ( )

Terrific book! It gave me a sense of India and made me feel almost as thought I were there. Great writing. ( )

Epic a la Tolstoy. Makes you appreciate what you have. About two humble tailors in India.

As Charles Dickens captured the lives of England’s working poor during the nascent Industrial Revolution, Mistry captures the lives of Indians surviving during the tumulus mid-1970s. Four individuals from different backgrounds are thrown together by political upheaval and economic necessity. Ishyar Darji and his nephew Omprakash are tailors hired by the widowed Dina Dalal to enhance her economic independence. Dala also takes the student Maneck Kohlah, the son of one of her childhood acquaintances, as a boarder to help pay her rent. Mistry explores the background and personal history of each against the background struggle of the India nation to find its own identity. As their lives intertwine, the four create a unique family. Within the fragile eye of the storm created by the State of Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi government, they find solace, peace, and a measure of happiness in caring for each other. All four seek the “fine balance” need on the knife edge between hope and despair, only to have their unity sundered by forces outside their control.