The Romantics

Set in contemporary India, 'The Romantics' tells the story of Samar, a young Brahmin restless within his uncertain society and fracturing caste system, who escapes a future of small-town jobs to live in the holy city of Benares and lose himself in books and solitude. But, far from offering him an undistracted existence the city forces all his silent desires into the light.

With his wonderfully vivid, precise and unsentimental prose Mishra draws us deep into the lives of his characters and perfectly captures the inner turmoil of a modernizing India, of people forced to adjust to an ever-changing world.