The Way Things Were

'An ambitious state-of-the-nation novel' Sunday TimesWhen Uma marries Toby, he brings to her comfortable life among Delhi's moneyed elite a depth that was otherwise missing. Toby's passion for his wife is matched only by his love for classical India, its language and its art. But in the new India, one transformed by rapacious energy and aspiration, there is little room for such romanticism. Uma and Toby will find that they have built their marriage on a fault line.Decades later, their son Skanda travels to India to return his father's body to his birthplace. This is a journey that takes him halfway around the world and deep within three generations of his family, whose fractures, frailties and toxic legacies he has always sought to elude.'Intensely engrossing . . . What Taseer has done with great intelligence and elegance is to deliver a novel of ideas in the guise of a very human story.' Financial Times'A formidable mix of the personal and the political . . . his style - at once highly intellectual and deeply poetic - is unique.' Independent'An accomplished novelist and commentator . . . Taseer has vividly exposed the quarrels and quandaries of an India undergoing rapid historical and social change.' Spectator