The Lowland

Born just fifteen months apart, subhash and udayan are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other in the calcutta neighborhood where they grow up. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the 1960s and udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the naxalite movement: he will risk all for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother's political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of america. But when subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family's home, he comes back to india, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family and to heal the wounds udayan left behind - including those seared in the heart of his brother's wife. Suspenseful and piercingly intimate, the lowland is a masterly novel of fate and will, exile and return. This is jhumpa lahiri at the height of her considerable powers.