Description

Anuradha Roy’s novel follows Myshkin as an old man looks back on his boyhood in 1930s India, haunted by the story of his mother Gayatri—who, suffocated by the constraints of traditional marriage, disappears to Dutch-held Bali with an Englishman. Through Myshkin’s search for meaning and the gradual revelation of Gayatri’s life in letters, the book traces how art, desire, and defiance take root far from home, while the world outside grows increasingly violent and divided. Spanning intimate family memory and the widening shadow of war, it explores themes of exile, identity, love’s refusal to fit, and the many lives—both lived and imagined—that shape a person’s fate. Roy’s lyrical, emotionally precise storytelling turns personal history into a sweeping meditation on how private choices echo through global catastrophe.

Available Editions

paperback edition cover

paperback

Quercus

Published Jan 1, 2018

344 pages

ISBN: 9780857058171

available

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Details

First Published

2018

Language

eng

Content Warnings

Content and trigger warnings for All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy.

Suicide/Self-Harm
Death/Grief
War/Trauma