A Fine Balance

Name: A Fine Balance
Author: Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry · 1995

Set during Indira Gandhi's Emergency (1975-77), Mistry's novel follows four people whose lives converge in a Bombay apartment. Its scope and moral weight rival Dickens. Almost unbearable and almost unbearably good. Readers describe it as "the book that broke me and made me a better person," which for once is not an exaggeration.

The case against

on the characters
“the characters are no more than puppets”
one star · a book blog
on the backstory chapters
“which can make it a bit of a slog to get through”
four stars · a Substack review
on the prose
“verbose and difficult to pay attention to for long periods of time”
a book blog
on the Beggarmaster’s introduction
“I had found the introduction of the Beggermaster character as bizarre and not very useful”
a Substack review