My Beloved Life
“Best Books of 2024 at The New Yorker“ “Best Books of 2024 at The Hindu“
“An immersive, moving portrait that steadily gathers intensity, vividness, and surprise.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Kumar unfurls a majestic Indian family saga in successive bildungsroman narratives of a father and daughter . . . A stunning final chapter sheds new light on their stories . . . Kumar excels at blending mysticism and a refined cosmopolitan perspective . . . Readers will find much to savor.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“My Beloved Life is storytelling at its best.”
— Bookpage (starred review)
“his new novel is always deeply human; the heart is everywhere in these pages.” — James Wood, in the New Yorker
“This profound book is full of lives whose beauty lies in the wholeness of their telling. A father, a daughter, a crime, a country being born, a migration, another country, a plague. ‘We are in touch with a great astonishing mystery when we put honest words down on paper to register a life and to offer witness. Everything else is ordinary,’ Kumar writes. His novel offers magnificent witness, and is not ordinary but extraordinary.” — Salman Rushdie
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