Going Home

When Rosemary, his wife of a decade, suddenly leaves him, BBC producer Cyrus returns to his Indian family in Bombay to lay to rest some troublesome specters from his childhood. The mercurial history of his family blends with the troubled political history of India, as Cyrus's voyage of discovery leads him to a crisis of decision. Cyrus learns that his father, a wealthy doctor, unyielding patriarch and abusive husband, left a large legacy of destruction and deceit. As he listens to his alienated siblings, he pieces together the political events that led to the death of some of his close friends, and comes to an adult perspective on the loveless marriage endured by his adored mother. Though he has come home, he realizes there is no home for him in India. In this detailed narrative of pain and privilege in an Indian family of the 20th century, the reader is attendant at the varieties of Indian culture, an observer of a continuously roiling panorama, engagingly related in a wry and ironic tone. (October 20)