From the acclaimed author of Sea of Poppies, a novel weaving history and memory together to create "a rare work that balances formal ingenuity, heart, and mind" (New Republic) Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Amitav Ghosh's radiant second novel follows two families--one English, one Bengali--as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, from the outbreak of World War II to the late twentieth century, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.