My Beloved Life: A Novel

An absorbing deeply moving novel that traces the arc of a man's life an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn. Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell's birthplace Jadu's mother while pregnant with him nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again he is in college meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane and as changes big and small sweep across India Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He befriends poets and politicians. He becomes a historian. And he has a daughter Jugnu a television journalist with a career in the United States—whose own story recasts the past in a new light. Piercing fleet-footed and undeniably resonant this is a novel from a singularly gifted writer about how we tell stories and write history how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements how no single life is without consequence.