The novelist...tenderly sows the hundred and fifty or so pages with a trail of story and detail, and the remarkable life becomes also a beloved life, one compassionately appraised by the noticing novelist. And what noticing! ... His new novel is always deeply human; the heart is everywhere in these pages. It is easily the best thing Amitava Kumar has written, largely because the novelist relaxes into the novelistic, and trusts the tale rather than the teller. Its astonishing details sit in the text like little coiled stories, pointedly revealed but not overpoweringly unpacked by the writer.
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