Book summary

In mid-1970s India, a "State of Internal Emergency" has been declared. Four disparate people find their lives connected in ways that are as inextricable as they are unexpected. A housing shortage brings them together as roommates in an apartment: they are a widow determined not to remarry, a student from the Himalayas, and a man and his nephew fleeing the violence of their village. The novel itself portrays India during a period of upheaval and tumult and explores the way the human spirit survives under such circumstances.

Media reviews

"This is a work of genius. I cannot begin to review it without saying so. It should be read by everyone who loves books, win every prize, make its author a millionaire, and displace once and for all the idea that MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN is a good book about India. Only in fairy tales is such virtue rewarded, and given that Rohinton Mistry wrote SUCH A LONG JOURNEY and saw the 1991 Booker go to Ben Okri, I don't expect justice this time either. But A FINE BALANCE is THE India novel, the novel readers have been waiting for ever since E. M. Forster and J. G. Farrell first attempted to render that vast subcontinent into prose: a novel in which all the suffering and absurdity, terror and beauty, charity and destitution of India are incarnated in two poor tailors, a student and a middle-aged woman."

  "I have read a few books recently, all fiction, about India. The last was an entertaining and comic novel about a modern Indian girl's search for "a nice boy" to marry. Even though it was funny, there were some disturbing themes, in the lack of control the young woman felt regarding her life and future.



Mistry's book, also often funny but overshadowed by repeated tragedy, also brings out the theme of lack of control. The four main characters are born in different castes and in different parts of India and are all searching for better lives. They come together through strange circumstances and work together to make a future for themselves, but repeatedly their lives are shattered by events beyond their control. Government corruption is a major offender in this dark world and poverty batters the lives of all of the characters in the novel. The story is set in the mid-1970s, during the "State of Emergency".



What was appealing to me about this book was how four ordinary people somehow managed to rise above the tragedies of their individual lives and reach out to each other and to others around them, some even less fortunate than themselves. The main characters learned to respect each other despite appearances and differences, and the struggle to survive sometimes brought out the best as well as the worst in even the minor characters.



The plot is a beautifully woven tapestry of intertwined lives and loves. Occasionally the story is horrifying, then comically shattering before it soars. The truths in this novel run deep, revealing the changing attitudes toward individuality and personal worth in a culture in turmoil. The depth of the human spirit in a world made up of beggers, murderers, extortionists alongside ordinary people just trying to get by is a fascinating and rich portrait of a culture and time painted by a master.

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