Saraswati Park: Harry Patch and the Legacy of War

Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize Winner of the Betty Trask Prize Shortlisted for the Ondaatje Award Shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award Shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize 'Joseph contrasts the inner and outer lives of her characters, and the uneasy friction between new and old cultures, with all the wit and delicacy of a latter-day Mrs Gaskell' The Times 'Joseph writes beautifully about quietness and stillness...this is a quiet, restrained novel but a great deal is going on beneath the surface' Sunday Times 'Anjali Joseph's debut novel is replete with evocative images of Bombay...but the book's greatest strength lies in its delicate portrayal of a young man's desperation for intimate connection, and a couple's acceptance of a marriage that has failed' Financial Times 'An elegantly realised portrait of unrequited love, frustrated aspirations and the unspoken compromises of marriage and family. Joseph neatly weaves in elements of the rapid social change occurring in the ever-expanding city but her principal concern is the more complex process of personal change and development and its bittersweet effects: the nerves, hang-ups and pains of youth and the regrets, pleasures and fulfilment of old age' Observer 'How true to life it seems - the background of disconsolate rains and chattering mynah birds entirely Bombay, the preoccupations universal ... a generous book where absolutes are neither sought nor found.' Guardian 'The frustrations of middle-class family life are the focus of Bombay-set Saraswati Park ... each character quickly feels like a familiar face, making this like The Corrections, but set in India...a treat' ELLE 'An unhurried, quietly heartbreaking study of a lower middle-class Bombay family's disintegration and renewal...Joseph's skill is finding the poetry inside modest dreams, small tragedies and disappointments' Metro 'A beautiful novel that personifies the new India from the inside out' Literary Review

Anjali Joseph