Finished this book a few days ago. It's breathtaking and captivating. Just as the cover page says, it's unmissable. To me, it is better than The Gods of Small Things which won the Booker Prize in 1997. It is also kind of have a happy ending 😊.
I'm always fascinated by stories that dealt with the lives of what is often described as the marginalised portion of society. The very poor, the transgender people, the hermaphrodite individuals, the hijras, the prostitutes, the untouchables. Even though in this novel the story of their lives are very much linked to historical events in India. We can very much sense the human rights activist in Roy from this novel. For the first half of the book the main character is Anjum who is a Hijra and who lives in a dilapidated graveyard.
The second part of the book centers on the architect Tilo (S. Tilottama) and how her life weaves around three men (Musa Yeswi, Nagaraj Hariharan and Biplap Dasgupta) who are in love with her. A large portion of the second part of the book deals with the Kashmir insurgency.
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