book reviews a fine balance

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

A FINE BALANCE

by Rohinton Mistry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 25, 1996

From the Toronto-based Mistry (Such a Long Journey, 1991), a splendid tale of contemporary India that, in chronicling the sufferings of outcasts and innocents trying to survive in the ``State of Internal Emergency'' of the 1970s, grapples with the great question of how to live in the face of death and despair. Though Mistry is too fine a writer to indulge in polemics, this second novel is also a quietly passionate indictment of a corrupt and ineluctably cruel society. India under Indira Gandhi has become a country ruled by thugs who maim and kill for money and power. The four protagonists (all victims of the times) are: Dina, 40-ish, poor and widowed after only three years of marriage; Maneck, the son of an old school friend of Dina's; and two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Om, members of the Untouchable caste. For a few months, this unlikely quartet share a tranquil happiness in a nameless city—a city of squalid streets teeming with beggars, where politicians, in the name of progress, abuse the poor and the powerless. Dina, whose dreams of attending college ended when her father died, is now trying to support herself with seamstress work; Maneck, a tenderhearted boy, has been sent to college because the family business is failing; and the two tailors find work with Dina. Though the four survive encounters with various thugs and are saved from disaster by a quirky character known as the Beggarmaster, the times are not propitious for happiness. On a visit back home, Om and Ishvar are forcibly sterilized; Maneck, devastated by the murder of an activist classmate, goes abroad. But Dina and the tailors, who have learned ``to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair,'' keep going. A sweeping story, in a thoroughly Indian setting, that combines Dickens's vivid sympathy for the poor with Solzhenitsyn's controlled outrage, celebrating both the resilience of the human spirit and the searing heartbreak of failed dreams.

Pub Date: April 25, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-44608-7

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996

GENERAL FICTION

Share your opinion of this book

More by Rohinton Mistry

BOOK REVIEW

by Rohinton Mistry

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

BOOK TO SCREEN

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2015

Kirkus Prize winner

National Book Award Finalist

A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

More by Hanya Yanagihara

by Hanya Yanagihara

PERSPECTIVES

FIREFLY LANE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2008

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...

Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest ( Magic Hour , 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.

Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today -like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3

Page Count: 496

Publisher: St. Martin's

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007

GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

More by Kristin Hannah

by Kristin Hannah

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

The Literary Edit

A Fine Balance Book Review

I’ve been recommended A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry many-a-time over the past few years. Firstly by a friend Laura who I interned with at the beginning of my time in London, then by one of my best friend’s Sarah, who was taught English by Mistry’s wife when living in Tortonto; and lastly by my friend Jack – with whom I attempted to start a workplace book club while working for a creative agency in East London. I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to reading it; I’ve had a copy for almost two years now, and having backpacked around India as a wanderlusting teen with big hopes for a bright future, it’s always been a country I’ve loved reading about.

It was only recently – after filling out one of those online quizzes that promises to inform you how well-read you are that I decided to finally read it. While I’d read 81 of the 100 books listed on the quiz, instead of seeing my result as that of a longstanding reader, I was aghast at the fact that there were 19 books I hadn’t read; A Fine Balance being one of them.

I started it one bright and breezy morning in Bondi – remembering my A-Level English teacher’s advice when it came to all things literary; when beginning a book, one must always read for at least an hour.

The type of tome that enthrals you from the very start, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is a beautifully written novel, with a legion of fans all over the globe; indeed it was only after I began reading it and posting about it on my Instagram that I learnt just how many people had been moved by Mistry’s poignant tale of Urban India.

The story follows four main characters – widowed Dina Dalal, tailors Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash Darji, and young student Maneck Kohlah who form an unlikely bond when circumstances see them living together in a small flat in an unidentified Indian city. Set against the backdrop of India’s two-year emergency the tale is an intricate one, that weaves political unrest and prejudice as the novels progresses.

Breathtakingly beautiful, heartbreaking and masterfully written, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance is about as perfect as a novel can possibly get. The sort of story that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page, it’s little wonder that so many readers love this tale quite as fiercely as they do.

Buy A Fine Balance from Amazon  or  Amazon AU .

A Fine Balance Summary

Set in mid-1970s India, A Fine Balance is a subtle and compelling narrative about four unlikely characters who come together in circumstances no one could have foreseen soon after the government declares a ‘State of Internal Emergency’. It is a breathtaking achievement: panoramic yet humane, intensely political yet rich with local delight; and, above all, compulsively readable.

Rohinton Mistry Author Bio

Rohinton Mistry was born in 1952 and grew up in Bombay, India, where he also attended university. In 1975 he emigrated to Canada, where he began a course in English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of three novels and one collection of short stories. His debut novel, Such a Long Journey, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the Governor General’s Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was made into an acclaimed feature film in 1998. His second novel, A Fine Balance, won many prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the Giller Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. His collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag, was published in 1987.In 2002 Faber published Mistry’s third novel, Family Matters, which was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize.

More Rohinton Mistry Books

If you loved A Fine Balance, you might also enjoy: Family Matters, Such a Long Journey and Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag.

Love this post?  Click here  to subscribe.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.

1 comment on “A Fine Balance Book Review”

• Pingback: Human Rankings. Power. Fragility. Containers – Life is Interesting

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Bibliotherapy Sessions
• In the press
• Disclaimer + privacy policy
• Work with me
• The BBC Big Read
• The 1001 Books to Read Before You Die
• Desert Island Books
• Books by Destination
• Beautiful Bookstores
• Literary Travel
• Stylish Stays
• The Journal
• The Bondi Literary Salon

• Member Login
• Library Patron Login

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR

FREE NEWSLETTERS

Search: Title Author Article Search String:

Reviews of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

• Literary Fiction
• 1960s & '70s
• Asian Authors

Rate this book

Buy This Book

About this Book

• Reading Guide

Book Summary

"Astonishing. . . . A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life." - The Wall Street Journal .

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future. As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

Chapter One City By the Sea

Dina Dalal seldom indulged in looking back at her life with regret or bitterness, or questioning why things had turned out the way they had, cheating her of the bright future everyone had predicted for her when she was in school, when her name was still Dina Shroff. And if she did sink into one of these rare moods, she quickly swam out of it. What was the point of repeating the story over and over and over, she asked herself--it always ended the same way; whichever corridor she took, she wound up in the same room. Dina's father had been a doctor, a GP with a modest practice who followed the Hippocratic oath somewhat more passionately than others of his profession. During the early years of Dr. Shroff's career, his devotion to his work was diagnosed, by peers, family members, and senior physicians, as typical of youthful zeal and vigour. "How refreshing, this enthusiasm of the young," they smiled, nodding sagely, confident that time would ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• "Beyond the Book" articles
• Free books to read and review (US only)
• Find books by time period, setting & theme
• Read-alike suggestions by book and author
• Book club discussions
• and much more!
• Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
• More about membership!

Media Reviews

Reader reviews.

Write your own review!

Read-Alikes

• Genres & Themes

If you liked A Fine Balance, try these:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

by Katherine Boo

Published 2014

About this book

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities.

Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh

Published 2009

More by this author

A motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts embark on a voyage across the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Opium Wars between Britain and China.

Books with similar themes

Support bookbrowse.

Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more!

Find out more

BookBrowse Book Club

Members Recommend

The Stolen Child by Ann Hood

An unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate.

Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung

Eve J. Chung's debut novel recounts a family's flight to Taiwan during China's Communist revolution.

Win This Book

Only the Brave by Danielle Steel

A powerful, sweeping historical novel about a courageous woman in World War II Germany.

Solve this clue:

and be entered to win..

Your guide to exceptional           books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info and giveaways by email.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Summer readings: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Three years ago I packed a rucksack and headed to India. Travelling alone, and with a broken heart, I knew books would be an essential part of my trip.

At Heathrow, scanning the bookshops, I couldn't bring myself to dive into Indian literature just yet – I needed the familiarity of a novel set in my own country to settle my nerves. So I compromised: I bought Maggie O'Farrell's After You'd Gone, and Rohinton Mistry 's A Fine Balance . I read O'Farrell during my first few days in Mumbai, comforted by its Britishness, as I slowly adjusted to this new country.

Two months later when India had seeped under my skin, I picked up Mistry's novel. And in an instant, the pleasure of reading a book set in a country you are in hit me.

Everywhere I turned were people, places and experiences lifted directly from its pages. The skinny teenage boy who sold me a chai and laughed at my freckles was Om, one of the novel's four protaganists. The bookish young man on a bike who stopped to talk to me was Maneck. Even the first sentence described every train journey I had taken:

"The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed. The train's brief deception jolted its riders. The bulge of humans hanging out of the doorway distended perilously, like a soap bubble at its limits." I was enthralled.

The novel is set during the Emergency in the mid-1970s, a period marked by huge political unrest and human rights violations, including detention, torture and forced sterilisation. Indira Gandhi is never named, just referred to as the "prime minister", but she is a sinister presence.

Shortly after starting the novel, I found myself in conversation with a twinkly elderly man, the owner of an antique shop. We talked over tea, and he rummaged in a drawer and brought out an old photograph: himself as a young man standing with a group including a smiling young woman. "Indira Gandhi," he said. "She visited here in 1956." I couldn't equate the attractive woman in the picture with the virtual dictator described in the book.

A great novel can transport you from one country to another. But reading one in its home country does something greater still. Being in India intensified my joy at this vast, heartbreaking and compassionate book, and it in turn deepened my experience of India.

I read many other great books during my trip – memorably Maximum City by Suketu Mehta , and Chasing the Monsoon by Alexander Frater. But A Fine Balance reminded me of the value of family and friendship. Although it is bleak, I found it hopeful, too, and it sent me home considerably lighter than when I arrived.

• Summer reading
• Summer readings
• Rohinton Mistry

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Book Reviews on...

A fine balance, by rohinton mistry, recommendations from our site.

“He’s an Indian-born Canadian writer. I left this till last because I don’t think I’ve read a better book when it comes to capturing life in a big, messy place which can be very hard and yet has some redeeming qualities. It’s set in India at the time of Mrs Gandhi’s quasi-dictatorship and state of emergency. The ‘fine balance’ of the title is the fine balance between hope and despair, which is explored by all the individuals in the story. They are all trying to make their fortune in a huge, unruly city which reminded me of Lagos. What’s striking about this book is that it is unsparingly and brutally honest. “ Read more...

The best books on Nigeria

Michael Peel , Foreign Correspondent

“A great romp of a novel, set in western India. In a way, it’s a precursor of Slumdog Millionaire , but much darker.” Read more...

The best books on The Poor and Their Money

Stuart Rutherford , Economist

Our most recommended books

War and peace by leo tolstoy, on liberty by john stuart mill, middlemarch by george eliot, nineteen eighty-four by george orwell, republic by plato, the odyssey by homer and translated by emily wilson.

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce, please support us by donating a small amount .

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

• Getting Started
• Start a Book Club
• Book Club Ideas/Help▼
• Our Featured Clubs ▼
• Popular Books
• Book Reviews
• Reading Guides
• Blog Home ▼
• Find a Recipe
• About LitCourse
• Course Catalog

Fine Balance (Mistry)

A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry, 1995 Random House 624 pp. ISBN-13: 9781400030651 Summary   Winner: L.A. Times Prize in Fiction, Commonwealth Writers Best Book of the Year, and Giller Prize .

At 600 pages, Mistry's stunning second novel looks intimidating, yet this moving tale of four people caught up in India's 1975 state of emergency—when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution in order to hold on to power following a scandal—is an incredibly detailed, compelling read that sweeps you along from the opening pages and is over far too soon.

Though it takes place in a time of political upheaval and chaos, A Fine Balance is not a political diatribe. Instead, it is a beautiful and compassionate portrait of the resiliency of the human spirit when faced with death, despair, and unconscionable suffering. Set in an unnamed city by the sea, it is the story of four disenfranchised strangers—a widow, a young student, and two tailors—who are forced by their impoverished circumstances to share a cramped apartment. Initially distrustful of one another, Dina, Maneck, Ishvar, and Om gradually build loving, familial bonds and learn together "to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair" in a society suddenly turned inhumanly cruel and corrupt. ( From the publisher .)

Author Bio • Birth—1952 • Where—Bombay, India • Education—B. S., University of Bombay; B.A., University of Toronto, 1983 • Awards—Governor General's Award; Commonwealth Writers Prize (twice); Giller Prize • Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada

Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives near Toronto. His first novel, Such a Long Journey , was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received, among other awards, the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book of the Year. A Fine Balance is his second novel, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction, the Giller Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize as well as a Booker Prize finalist. Mistry is also the author of Swimming Lessons: And Other Stories from Firozsha Baag , a collection of short stories.

Four years after publishing  Swimming Lessons in 1987, Mistry released his first novel. Such a Long Journey , which follows a bank clerk’s unwitting descent into corrupt political dealings in 1971 Bombay, was short-listed for the Booker prize and won Canada’s Governor General’s Award. Next came A Fine Balance , Mistry’s sweeping story of four strangers forced into sharing an apartment in 1975 Bombay. Again the Booker short list, and top Canadian honor the Giller Prize.

The selection of A Fine Balance for Oprah’s Book Club in 2001 changed the nature of Mistry’s career, as it has for many authors. While already respected, he had now earned a recognition with a new readership in the hundreds of thousands—a readership that was by and large unlikely to pick up a sprawling book set in 1970s India. Mistry told the show, “[India] remains my focus and makes it all worthwhile because of the people...their capacity for laughter, their capacity to endure.... Perhaps my main intention in writing this novel was to look at history from the bottom up.”

As a result of the Oprah publicity, a greater weight of expectation may have rested on Mistry’s third novel than it might have otherwise; this is true not only because of the increased pairs of eyes on Mistry’s work, but because he is a writer who is clearly still evolving. His earlier books encountered some criticism for heavyhandedness, particularly where the injection of political and social commentary were concerned.

In 2002’s Family Matters , Mistry moves away from a charged national backdrop and focuses more on family politics, though his keen observance of Indian culture remains a strong element. Charting the effects of one partriarch’s physical decline on his extended family, Family Matters moves forward in Bombay time to the mid-1990s and uses the Vakeel clan as a lens through which the author views (critically) religious fundamentalism.

Mistry’s consistent performance as a novelist, and ever growing awareness of his talents among American readers, promises a long and fruitful career. One Atlantic reviewer, beginning a review of Family Matters , put it this way: “[Mistry] has long been recognized as one of the best Indian writers; he ought to be considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive.”

Extras • Mistry has not lived in his native India for many years; but like many expatriate writers, he continues a relationship with his country in his writings and has enriched his readers’ understanding of it. In his first two novels, Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance , Mistry set his humorous, heartrending, Dickensian view of Bombay under the shadow of tumult under Indira Ghandi’s rule in the 1970s.

• Although he left India in 1975 and does not often go back, Mistry told a British magazine that he feels no hindrance in writing about his home country. "So far I have had no difficulty writing about it, even though I have been away for so long," he said. "All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction..."

• After emigrating to Toronto in 1975, Mistry got a job as a bank clerk and ascended to the supervisor of customer service after a few years. His dissatisfaction in the job led to his taking classes in English, first at York College, and ultimately pursuing a degree part-time at the University of Toronto.

• Mistry had no ambitions to be a writer until he got to Canada and began taking classes in literature at the University of Toronto. Encouraged by his wife, he set out to win a university literary contest by writing his first short story. He called in sick from work, devoted several days to the story, entered it, and won the contest. ( From Barnes & Noble .)

Book Reviews Those who continue to harp on the decline of the novel...ought to consider Rohinton Mistry. He needs no infusion of magic realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical. The New York Times

Astonishing.... A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life. Wall Street Journal

Monumental.... Few have caught the real sorrow and inexplicable strength of India, the unaccountable crookedness and sweetness, as well as Mistry. Time

In mid-1970s urban India—a chaos of wretchedness on the streets and slogans in the offices—a chain of circumstances tosses four varied individuals together in one small flat. Stubbornly independent Dina, widowed early, takes in Maneck, the college-aged son of a more prosperous childhood friend and, more reluctantly, Ishvar and Om, uncle and nephew tailors fleeing low-caste origins and astonishing hardships. The reader first learns the characters' separate, compelling histories of brief joys and abiding sorrows, then watches as barriers of class, suspicion, and politeness are gradually dissolved. Even more affecting than Mistry's depictions of squalor and grotesque injustice is his study of friendships emerging unexpectedly, naturally. The novel's coda is cruel and heart-wrenching but deeply honest. This unforgettable book from the author of Such a Long Journey is highly recommended. Library Journal

From the Toronto-based Mistry ( Such a Long Journey , 1991), a splendid tale of contemporary India that, in chronicling the sufferings of outcasts and innocents trying to survive in the "State of Internal Emergency" of the 1970s, grapples with the great question of how to live in the face of death and despair. Though Mistry is too fine a writer to indulge in polemics, this second novel is also a quietly passionate indictment of a corrupt and ineluctably cruel society. India under Indira Gandhi has become a country ruled by thugs who maim and kill for money and power. The four protagonists (all victims of the times) are: Dina, 40-ish, poor and widowed after only three years of marriage; Maneck, the son of an old school friend of Dina's; and two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Om, members of the Untouchable caste. For a few months, this unlikely quartet share a tranquil happiness in a nameless city—a city of squalid streets teeming with beggars, where politicians, in the name of progress, abuse the poor and the powerless. Dina, whose dreams of attending college ended when her father died, is now trying to support herself with seamstress work; Maneck, a tenderhearted boy, has been sent to college because the family business is failing; and the two tailors find work with Dina. Though the four survive encounters with various thugs and are saved from disaster by a quirky character known as the Beggarmaster, the times are not propitious for happiness. On a visit back home, Om and Ishvar are forcibly sterilized; Maneck, devastated by the murder of an activist classmate, goes abroad. But Dina and the tailors, who have learned "to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair," keep going. A sweeping story, in a thoroughly Indian setting, that combines Dickens's vivid sympathy for the poor with Solzhenitsyn's controlled outrage, celebrating both the resilience of the human spirit and the searing heartbreak of failed dreams. Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions   1. Why has Mistry chosen not to name the Prime Minister or the City by the Sea, when they are easily recognizable? Does recognition of these elements make any difference in your attitude toward the story?

2. Is Nusswan presented entirely as a villain, or does he have redeeming features? What are his real feelings toward Dina?

3. How does Dina's position within her family reflect the position of women in her culture and social class? Is the status of Om's sisters the same as Dina's, or different? What sorts of comparisons can you make between the roles and functions of women in India (as represented in this novel) and in America?

4. Post-Independence India has seen much religious and ethnic violence: for instance, the mutual slaughter of Hindus and Muslims after Partition (1947), during which Ishvar and Narayan saved Ashraf and his family, and the hunting down and killing of Sikhs after the Prime Minister's murder, witnessed by Maneck. How does the behavior of the characters in the novel, ordinary Hindus, Parsis, and Muslims, contrast with the hatred that inspired these terrible acts? How much of this hatred seems to be fomented by political leaders? Dukhi observes bitterly "that at least his Muslim friend treated him better than his Hindu brothers" [p. 115]. What does this say about ethnic and religious loyalties, as opposed to personal ones?

5. After Rustom's death, Dina's primary goal is self-reliance. But as the novel progresses and she makes new friends, she begins to change her ideas. "We'll see how independent you are when the goondas come back and break your head open, " Dina says to Maneck [p. 433]. Does she find in the end thatreal self-reliance is possible, or even desirable? Does she change her definition of self-reliance?

6. Most people seem indifferent or hostile to the Prime Minister and her Emergency policies, but a few characters, like Mrs. Gupta and Nusswan, support her. What does the endorsement of such people indicate about the Prime Minister? Can you compare the Prime Minister and her supporters with other political leaders and parties in today's world?

7. Why does Avinash's chess set become so important to Maneck, who comes to see chess as the game of life? "The rules should always allow someone to win, " says Om, while Maneck replies, "Sometimes, no one wins" [p. 410]. How do the events of the novel resemble the various moves and positions in chess?

8. Dina distances herself from the political ferment of the period: "Government problemsÑgames played by people in power, " she tells Ishvar. "It doesn't affect ordinary people like us" [p. 75]. But in the end it does affect all of them, drastically. Why do some, like Dina and Maneck, refuse to involve themselves in politics while others, like Narayan and Avinash, eagerly do so? Which position is the better or wiser one?

9. When Ishvar and Om are incarcerated in the labor camp, Ishvar asks what crime they have committed. "It's not a question of crime and punishment—it's problem and solution, " says the foreman [p. 338]. If it is true that there is a problem—the vast number of homeless people and beggars on city streetsÑwhat would a proper and humane solution be?

10. People at the bottom of the economic heap frequently blame so-called middlemen: people like Dina, who makes her living through other people's labor, or like Ibrahim the rent collector. Do such middlemen strike you as making money immorally? Who are the real villains?

11. How would you sum up Beggarmaster: Is he ruthless, kind, or a bit of both? Does he redeem himself by his thoughtful acts, the seriousness with which he takes his responsibilities toward his dependents? In a world this cruel, are such simple categories as "good" and "bad" even applicable?

12. When Beggarmaster draws Shankar, Shankar's mother, and himself, he represents himself as a freak just like the other two. What does this vision he has of himself tell us about him?

13. The government's birth control program is enforced with violence and cruelty, with sterilization quotas and forced vasectomies. But is birth control policy in itself a bad thing? Dina tells Om, for example, "Two children only. At the most, three. Haven't you been listening to the family planning people?" [p. 466]. How might family planning be implemented in a humane fashion?

14. After Dina's father dies, her family life is blighted until she marries Rustom. In later years, she chooses to withdraw from her natural family; it is not until her year with the tailors and Maneck that she again comes to know what a family might be. What constitutes a family? What other examples of unconventional "families" do you find in the novel?

15. Why do Ishvar, Om, and Dina survive, in their diminished ways, while Maneck finally gives up? Is it due to something in their pasts, their childhoods, their families, their characters?

16. "People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, " says Beggarmaster, "how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars" [p. 493]. Does A Fine Balance show people's vulnerability, or their fortitude?

17. What effect is achieved by the novel's mildly comic ending, with Om and Ishvar clowning around at Dina's door? Is the ending appropriate, or off-balance?

18. The novel gives us a vivid picture of life for members of the untouchable caste in remote villages. Why might such an apparently anachronistic system have survived into the late twentieth century? Does it resemble any other social systems with which you are acquainted? Why do so few of its victims fight the system, as Narayan does? Why do so few leave the village: is it from necessity, social conservatism, respect for tradition? ( Questions issued by publisher .) top of page (summary)

LitLovers © 2024

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry | 4.38 | 124,690 ratings and reviews

Ranked #2 in Indian , Ranked #6 in Indian Author — see more rankings .

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of A Fine Balance from the world's leading experts.

Oprah Winfrey CEO/O Network Recommends this book

Stuart Rutherford A great romp of a novel, set in western India. In a way, it’s a precursor of Slumdog Millionaire, but much darker. (Source)

Jacqueline Novogratz A Dickensian novel that captures the essence of being poor in urban India in ways extraordinary and deeply human. (Source)

Michael Peel The book is full of these terrible moments and yet at the end of it you feel strangely uplifted. (Source)

Rankings by Category

A Fine Balance is ranked in the following categories:

• #50 in Asian
• #21 in Canada
• #7 in Canadian
• #28 in Corruption
• #53 in Long
• #6 in Oprah
• #29 in Poverty
• #50 in World

Similar Books

If you like A Fine Balance, check out these similar top-rated books:

Learn: What makes Shortform summaries the best in the world?

Retrospect Journal.

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY'S HISTORY, CLASSICS AND ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE

Review: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Written by Luke Neill

Rohinton Mistry’s 1995 novel A Fine Balance is set in 1970s India and follows four characters who come to interact with each other over a period of around 15 years. There is Dina, the struggling landlady whose husband was run over and killed whilst cycling to buy ice cream for a family gathering; Ishvar and Omprakash, tailors whose families had been brutalised by the destructive legacy of the caste system; and Maneck, a refrigeration and air conditioning student whose best friend is tortured and killed by the government.

Central to the plotline is The Emergency of 1975-1977, in which the Prime Minister was given the power to rule by decree, creating an effective dictatorship in response to threats of ‘internal disturbance’. This Emergency, under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, proved to be one of the most intensely controversial moments of independent India’s history. Forced mass-sterilisation, censorship of the press, mass political arrests, and a ‘national beautification’ program in which thousands of slums were destroyed, created an atmosphere of political and social upheaval which the four characters are forced to navigate (and experience first-hand) throughout the course of the novel.

To try to explain the characters’ individual stories in one short paragraph is an injustice to the unimaginable picture of pain and suffering that Mistry paints. However, the curious beauty of the book is that in a story so saturated with pain, fear, torture, death and castration, there emerges unmistakable moments of joy. Mistry makes it abundantly clear that even the darkest horrors cannot suffocate the fundamental faculty of the human condition – to laugh in the face of adversity. This in itself, however, is by no means part of a neat and contrived narrative in which good trumps evil, and to settle with that would be a disservice to Mistry’s far more nuanced depiction of life and hardship.

In fact, by the end of the book, one begins to question the title. The overwhelming impression is that there seems to be no ‘Fine Balance’ whatsoever, and it would be understandable to conclude that all the joy and desire of the characters in the novel, all their intermittent yet powerful glimmers of hope, are quashed with a disturbing, catastrophic finality in its closing pages. It is certainly a sobering narrative. Without giving anything away, a future reader should not expect a happy ending. However, as The Atlantic puts it:

What makes the final pages of A Fine Balance heart-breaking is not that we see the protagonists’ lives so hideously diminished but that in spite of it all they are still laughing.

This sums up what seems the most important aspect of the book. It becomes clear that Mistry’s ‘Fine Balance’ is not the balancing of justice and injustice, of good and evil, or of love and hatred. It does not attempt to portray life as an equitable state in which these opposites weigh against each other into a precarious but enduring ‘Balance’. We learn instead that this balance is a state of mind, of measuring positivity and optimism against despair. If joy can manifest itself in the most abhorrent of circumstances, then personal suffering can always be balanced against acceptance – and eventually defiance – of one’s own condition.

I would recommend anyone to read A Fine Balance , whether to learn something about the period, to share in the fascinating stories of the characters, or to understand a culture and time in which the scales are tipped in the wrong direction. Image:  Cover image of  A Fine Balance

Bibliography:

Allen, Brooke. “Loss and Endurance: Rohinton Mistry’s tragic and triumphant vision”. Accessed 02/02/19: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/09/loss-and-endurance/302557/

Share this:

One response to “review: a fine balance by rohinton mistry”.

What a beautiful review, you gave me a different perspective..,loved it!!

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Bob on Books

Thoughts on books, reading, and life

Review: A Fine Balance

A Fine Balance , Rohinton Mistry. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Summary: Centered around the flat of Dina Dalal, inhabited by two tailors and a student with a larger circle on the periphery, the novel charts the “fine balances” the people of India sought to maintain through the Emergency Rule of Indira Gandhi–balances of both physical and spiritual.

For a twenty-one month period from 1975 to 1977 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ruled under a decree of a “state of emergency” in which constitutional processes were suspended during which mass arrests, forced sterilizations, and slum clearances forced residents into work camps or onto the streets, where they could be arrested as well. Corruption was rampant and “justice” was bought and sold.

Most of the narrative of  A Fine Balance occurs during this period, with “retrospective” narratives of the lives of each of the principle characters and the circumstances that brought them together. The characters are Dina Dalal, a widow after losing, in a bicycle accident, the man she married for love, opposing her brother Nusswan’s efforts to match her up with more prosperous men. She struggles to support herself by sewing in order to hold onto the rent-controlled flat that represented the three years of love she and her husband enjoyed. Maneck Kohlah is the son of a couple living in the hill country who made their living operating a general store, slowly losing its edge to the tide of modernity invading their village. Maneck comes to the city for training in heating and air conditioning, tires of living in a filthy hostel and becomes a lodger with Dina through a friend of Maneck’s family. Ishvar and Omprakash Darji come from a caste of tanners, change occupation and learn tailoring and when custom work dwindles, come to the city even as Dina is setting up a shop to supply a clothing export business.

Already, one senses the “fine balance” between destitution and survival with which most of the characters struggle. Dina struggles to keep her flat against the attempts of her landlord to evict her to secure higher rents. Her steps to take lodgers and run a business put her at greater risk. Given the dearth of housing the tailors are forced to take a hut in one of the slums. Eventually it is bulldozed and they sleep in a shop doorway, paying off the watchman, until they are rounded up by police for a work camp (it is during the time at the work camp when the “fine balance” phrase is used for the Monkey Man, who eventually creates an act balancing two children on a pole, which his audiences found repulsive). Along with them is a beggar, Shankar, without hands or legs, who they help, and who in turn helps them until they can get free of the camp, with the aid of Shankar’s Beggar Master, to whom they are beholden but who also becomes their protector, and eventually Dina’s as well.

Maneck strives for a different “fine balance”, an interior one between parental relationships and expectations, his own aspirations, and the injustices and tragedies that he witnesses in the lives of his friends. In some sense, all of the characters live on the knife edge of hope and despair, but the question of for whom this is hardest–for those who endure the most physically or those who experience the most in their souls, is one of the questions this book raises.

Publisher’s blurbs describe this book as Dickensian in its narrative sweep and compassionate realism. Like Dickens, Mistry introduces us to a group of characters for whom we come to care and whose lives are caught up in the social forces of their time. One sees the tragic human consequences when “necessity” demands the suspension of the rule of law for the rule of power. And the book reminds us of the “fine balance” within which all of our lives are lived.

Share this:

One thought on “ review: a fine balance ”.

Pingback: The Month in Reviews: July 2016 | Bob on Books

Leave a comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

"...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." - Philippians 4:8

thoughts of a preacher, minister, and aspiring theologian

a place where book lovers come to gather

Apokatastasis is but the gospel of Christ's absolute and unconditional love sung in an eschatological key

Pages completely filled with incomplete thoughts.

Essays, poetry, meditations, and book reviews by Jeremy Vogan.

Books | Reflections For the Good of the Church

simply feisty seeds

Explorations in Biblical Theology from J. Richard Middleton

Professional website and blog

Howdy! We're the largest independent bookstore in Texas. This is our blog.

The blog of Academe magazine

"Books are humanity in print." Barbara Tuchman

Commentary on Working-Class Culture, Education, and Politics

Comments on the New Testament and Early Christianity (and related matters)

A book critic's discoveries and recommendations

Communication Strategies for Bridging Differences

Practicing stillness in a busy world

"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't." - Blaise Pascal

Becoming More Like Jesus All The Time

IFES Secretary for Dialogue and Social Engagement

crude inky blab

"For we are God's workmanship . . ." - Ephesians 2:10

Exploring life through pilgrimage, literature, and faith

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

A Fine Balance

• Why has Mistry chosen not to name the Prime Minister or the City by the Sea, when they are easily identifiable? Does this affect your attitude toward the story? 
• Is Nusswan presented entirely as a villain, or does he have redeeming features? What are his real feelings toward Dina? 
• How does Dina's position within her family reflect the position of women in her culture and social class? What sorts of comparisons can you make between the roles and functions of women in India (as represented in this novel) and in America? 
• Post-Independence India has seen much religious and ethnic violence. How much of this hatred seems to be fomented by political leaders? Dukhi observes bitterly "that at least his Muslim friend treated him better than his Hindu brothers" [p. 115]. What does this say about ethnic and religious loyalties, as opposed to personal ones? 
• Most people seem indifferent or hostile to the Prime Minister and her Emergency policies, but a few characters, like Mrs. Gupta and Nusswan, support her. What does the endorsement of such people indicate about the Prime Minister? Can you compare the Prime Minister and her supporters with other political leaders and parties in today's world? 
• When Ishvar and Om are incarcerated in the labor camp, Ishvar asks what crime they have committed. "It's not a question of crime and punishment—it's problem and solution," says the foreman [p. 338]. If it is true that there is a problem—the vast number of homeless people and beggars on city streets—what would a proper and humane solution be? 
• Why does Avinash's chess set become so important to Maneck, who comes to see chess as the game of life? "The rules should always allow someone to win," says Om, while Maneck replies, "Sometimes, no one wins" [p. 410]. How do the events of the novel resemble the various moves and positions in chess? 
• Why do some, like Dina and Maneck, refuse to involve themselves in politics while others, like Narayan and Avinash, eagerly do so? Which position is the better or wiser one? 
• After Rustom's death, Dina's primary goal is self-reliance. But as the novel progresses, she begins to change her ideas. "We'll see how independent you are when the goondas come back and break your head open," Dina says to Maneck [p. 433]. Does she find in the end that real self-reliance is possible, or even desirable? Does she change her definition of self-reliance?   

WATCH OWN APP

Download the Watch OWN app and access OWN anytime, anywhere. Watch full episodes and live stream OWN whenever and wherever you want. The Watch OWN app is free and available to you as part of your OWN subscription through a participating TV provider.

NEWSLETTERS

SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS TODAY AND ENJOY THE BENEFITS.

• Stay up to date with the latest trends that matter to you most.
• Have top-notch advice and tips delivered directly to you.
• Be in the know on current and upcoming trends.

OPRAH IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF HARPO, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2024 HARPO PRODUCTIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. OWN: OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK

The Book Report Network

• Bookreporter
• ReadingGroupGuides
• AuthorsOnTheWeb

Sign up for our newsletters!

Find a Guide

For book groups, what's your book group reading this month, favorite monthly lists & picks, most requested guides of 2023, when no discussion guide available, starting a reading group, running a book group, choosing what to read, tips for book clubs, books about reading groups, coming soon, new in paperback, write to us, frequently asked questions.

• Request a Guide

Advertise with Us

Add your guide, you are here:, a fine balance, reading group guide.

• Discussion Questions

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

• Publication Date: December 11, 2012
• Genres: Fiction , Literary Fiction
• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Vintage
• ISBN-10: 0679776451
• ISBN-13: 9780679776451
• About the Book
• Reading Guide (PDF)

Rohinton Mistry

• Bibliography

Find a Book

View all »  |  By Author »  |  By Genre »  |  By Date »

• readinggroupguides.com on Facebook
• readinggroupguides.com on Twitter
• readinggroupguides on Instagram

• How to Add a Guide
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Newsletters

Copyright © 2024 The Book Report, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

• Literature & Fiction

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $29.79 $ 29 . 79 FREE delivery June 4 - 11 Ships from: Happy Trade Store Sold by: Happy Trade Store

Save with used - acceptable .savingpriceoverride { color:#cc0c39important; font-weight: 300important; } .reinventmobileheaderprice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerdisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventpricesavingspercentagemargin, #apex_offerdisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventpricepricetopaymargin { margin-right: 4px; } $8.00 $ 8 . 00 free delivery monday, june 3 on orders shipped by amazon over $35 ships from: amazon sold by: achoejr06, return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the authors

A Fine Balance Hardcover – December 18, 2001

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 624 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Knopf
• Publication date December 18, 2001
• Dimensions 6.53 x 1.43 x 9.52 inches
• ISBN-10 0375414819
• ISBN-13 978-0375414817
• See all details

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Editorial Reviews

From the inside flap.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

From the Back Cover

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; 4th edition (December 18, 2001)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375414819
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375414817
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.01 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.53 x 1.43 x 9.52 inches
• #66,879 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the authors

Rohinton mistry.

Rohinton Mistry was born in 1952 and grew up in Bombay, India, where he also attended university. In 1975 he emigrated to Canada, where he began a course in English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto.He is the author of three novels and one collection of short stories. His debut novel, Such a Long Journey (1991), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the Governor General's Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was made into an acclaimed feature film in 1998. His second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), won many prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the Giller Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. His collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag, was published in 1987.In 2002 Faber published Mistry's third novel, Family Matters, which was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize.

Sudha Bhuchar

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Advertisement

Supported by

An Accidental Family

• Share full article

By A. G. Mojtabai

• June 23, 1996

A FINE BALANCE By Rohinton Mistry. 603 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $26.

Those who continue to harp on the inevitable decline of the novel ought to hold off for a while. The unique task of the genre, after all, is truthfulness to human experience in all its variety, and thanks to the great migrations of population in our time, human variety is to be found in replenished abundance all around us. The displacements, comminglings and clashings of peoples and cultures have released new energies, strange pollens; indeed, the harvest has barely begun.

Consider Rohinton Mistry, a Parsi, born in Bombay in 1952, who has lived in Canada since 1975. His first book was a widely praised collection of stories, "Swimming Lessons and Other Stories From Firozsha Baag." It was followed by the novel "Such a Long Journey," which received the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best book of 1991. His third book, "A Fine Balance," defies easy categorization. Calling it a domestic novel would not be altogether amiss, provided one added: a domestic novel that refuses to remain within walls.

Set in 1975 in an unidentified Indian city, it opens quietly and builds slowly, starting with a simple, centripetal narrative premise. Mrs. Dina Dalal, a financially pressed Parsi widow in her early 40's, is determined to keep her independence, resisting the options of remarriage or a return to the bullying charity of her brother's household. To make ends meet, Dina takes in a paying boarder, Maneck Kohlah, the son of a Parsi school chum, and hires two Hindu tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, to sew dresses for an export company. At first she sets the tailors to work under sweatshop conditions. The author charts the transformation of an empty apartment into a home full to bursting, and the binding of mismatched strangers into a communion as close as family.

Each of the four main characters is a refugee from one thing or another. Dina seeks to escape from the suffocating strictures imposed upon respectable, single, aging women. Maneck, the paying boarder, has been sent down from the hill country to attend college. His beloved mountain village in its majestic natural setting has been scarred by road construction and electrification projects, its forests depopulated. Seeking an education in step with the times, Maneck is studying for a diploma in refrigeration and air conditioning, for entry into "an industry that would grow with the nation's prosperity."

The tailors, Ishvar and Om, have been fleeing all their lives; they are refugees from caste and communal violence and, finally, from the institutional violence of Indira Gandhi's emergency rule. Om, just 17, is the son of Ishvar's murdered brother, and Ishvar, in his 40's, who has never married, has dedicated his life to being father-protector to his nephew. Their histories are joined in unending misfortune. Living from hand to mouth (even their sewing machines are rented), entirely at the mercy of the social upheavals of the hour, they are subject to periodic sweeps of the city to provide crowds for political rallies and conscripted manual labor for civic beautification schemes. Each time they are beaten down, they have to pick themselves up and start over. This happens again and again.

Under these circumstances, Dina's apartment becomes a haven for the tailors. The four strangers start sharing their stories, then meals, then living space, until, over the divides of caste, class and religion, the ties of human kinship prevail. In this one shabby little apartment, at least, the human family becomes more than a phrase, a metaphor, a piety. The author takes his own sweet time here, as well he should. I balked at the slowness at first, but just when I'd started to mutter "This really is much too sweet!" and "What are the odds of such harmony coming to be under such conditions?" and "I only wish. . . ." the downslope began, a veritable avalanche of catastrophe ensued, and I keenly regretted my reluctance to bask in the brief patch of sunshine Mr. Mistry had provided.

What follows is a double misfortune of catastrophic event and narrative stance, because from here on it feels as if some invisible but essential substance -- like air or love -- that has hitherto flowed unstintingly from author to character has been siphoned off, leaving the dry machinations of plot design in its stead. This withdrawal is especially disconcerting where Dina and Ishvar are concerned.

Since decency is often drab, dogged and undramatic (or at least not obviously dramatic), Dina and Ishvar are people of a kind rarely found in fiction today. And here they are, moving, breathing, fully dimensional figures -- placed at the very center of the novel. All the more disappointing, then, to find myself losing touch with them, except for a few external landmarks passed during the final eight-year stretch of the narrative, which encompasses only a few chapters. I for one wanted news of their interior journeys as well.

At book's end, I returned to ponder the title, "A Fine Balance," because my sense of imbalance -- of despair over hope, of sustained moral injury beyond reach of remedy -- was keen. Perhaps this residual imbalance is due in part to a conflict between Mr. Mistry's political and literary aims. Certainly the indictment of Mrs. Gandhi's regime served up in these pages could not be more trenchantly clear.

There seemed also to be an imbalance in the construction of the novel itself, a disproportion of background to foreground. Mr. Mistry intensely loves the marginal, and his street people -- proofreaders, renting agents, peddlers of potency nostrums, beggars and beggarmasters -- are often so vibrantly ensouled, so diverting, that they threaten to upstage everyone else. A woman drying her laundered sari, her only garment, one half at a time, for example, is captured in a brief imperishable glimpse: "One end was wound wet round her waist and over her shrunken breasts, as far as it would go. The drying half was stretched along the railway fence, flowing from her body like a prayer in the evening sun."

And here is a legless beggar, extolling the creativity of his beggarmaster -- the man who stage-manages a theater of misfortune, casting the players, scripting them, designing costumes and wounds:

"If all beggars have the same injury, public gets used to it and feels no pity. Public likes to see variety. . . . Blind beggars are everywhere. But blind, with eyeballs missing, face showing empty sockets, plus nose chopped off -- now anyone will give money for that. Diseases are also useful. A big growth on the neck or face, oozing yellow pus. That works well."

Even animals, performing animals with walk-on parts, are capable of stealing the show. A "communicating cow" is mentioned in passing:

"The cow, caparisoned in colorful brocaded fabrics, a string of tiny silver bells round her neck, was led into the ring of spectators by a man with a drum. Though the fellow's shirt and turban were bright-hued, he seemed quite drab compared to the richly bedizened cow. The two walked the circle: once, twice, thrice -- however long it took him to recite the cow's curriculum vitae, with special emphasis on prophecies and forecasts accurately completed to date. His voice was deafeningly raucous, his eyes bloodshot, his gestures manic, and all this frenzy was calculated as a masterly counterpoint to the cow's calm demeanor. . . . When the drum ceased, the man shouted the paying customer's question into the cow's ear, loud enough for the entire ring of humans to hear. And she answered with a nod or shake of her intricately made-up head, tinkling the tiny silver bells round her neck."

American readers hearing the name of yet another important English-language novelist from Bombay probably want to know how he compares with Salman Rushdie, so I'll give it a try: Less hyper, to start with the obvious, less given to flashy virtuoso display, more open to genuine wonder and sorrow at the ways people manage to endure. When both authors are at their very best, Mr. Mistry brings to mind Bruegel, Mr. Rushdie Hieronymus Bosch. As you can see from the communicating cow passage quoted above, Rohinton Mistry needs no infusions of magical realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is quite magical enough.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

An assault led to Chanel Miller’s best seller, “Know My Name,” but she had wanted to write children’s books since the second grade. She’s done that now  with “Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All.”

When Reese Witherspoon is making selections for her book club , she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, who died on May 14 , specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope , spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

“The Light Eaters,” a new book by Zoë Schlanger, looks at how plants sense the world  and the agency they have in their own lives.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

• Literature & Fiction
• Contemporary Fiction

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the authors

A Fine Balance: The epic modern classic Paperback – 19 October 2006

Save extra with 2 offers.

• Free Delivery

10 days Replacement

• Amazon Delivered
• Pay on Delivery
• Secure transaction

Replacement Instructions

Purchase options and add-ons

• Print length 624 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Faber & Faber
• Publication date 19 October 2006
• Dimensions 12.6 x 3.7 x 19.8 cm
• ISBN-10 057123058X
• ISBN-13 978-0571230587
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Popular titles by this author

Product description

Book description, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber; Main edition (19 October 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 057123058X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571230587
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 kg 50 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.6 x 3.7 x 19.8 cm
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ United Kingdom
• #3,763 in Indian Writing (Books)
• #16,758 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

About the authors

Sudha bhuchar.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry was born in 1952 and grew up in Bombay, India, where he also attended university. In 1975 he emigrated to Canada, where he began a course in English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto.He is the author of three novels and one collection of short stories. His debut novel, Such a Long Journey (1991), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the Governor General's Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was made into an acclaimed feature film in 1998. His second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), won many prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the Giller Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. His collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag, was published in 1987.In 2002 Faber published Mistry's third novel, Family Matters, which was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize.

Customer reviews

Reviews with images.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from India

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Press Releases
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell under Amazon Accelerator
• Protect and Build Your Brand
• Amazon Global Selling
• Become an Affiliate
• Fulfilment by Amazon
• Advertise Your Products
• Amazon Pay on Merchants
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Your Account
• Returns Centre
• 100% Purchase Protection
• Amazon App Download
• Conditions of Use & Sale
• Privacy Notice
• Interest-Based Ads