A different style to my usual reads. Five short stories linked to form a comprehensive whole.

Interesting and enjoyable.

I didnt really enjoy this, not sure what it was about it but it wasnt gripping me like I thought it would. Wouldnt read more by this author.

With thanks to netgalley and the author.

A state of Freedom is more a collection of stories from the 5 main characters. All whom have a link to India.

I really enjoyed this book.

Bold and different, this is a collection of stories from the perspective of five characters, each returning to India.
The five stories are fascinating and hard-hitting at times, memorable and thought-provoking. I enjoyed some more than others but it is so well written that they are all worth staying with.

The book is a collection of five interconnected tales, all set in present day India. In the first, a US-based lecturer returns to his homeland with his six-year-old son and experiences a growing sense of unease as they explore various tourist attractions. The next story focuses on a London publisher who spends time with his parents in Bombay every year. He becomes friendly with the family servants and takes up an invitation to visit one of their homes, but soon begins to regret this decision. The middle story is the longest and it tells of a abusive man's attempts to train a bear cub to dance, in order to perform on the streets for money. The fourth tale examines the fortunes of two young girls in a remote village, who end up taking very different paths. And the last section is a short stream of consciousness from a troubled construction worker.

Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives—formally daring, fierce, but full of pity—delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.

This book was a beautiful, intriguing, and often heartbreaking portrait of India. My favourite element was the structure, as the story was told in five parts, through the eyes of different characters. At times the writing was too overblown for me, but I was still captured by the book.

This was the first book I've read from this author and I didn't love it. It was just okay for me and the characters weren't as well thought out as they could've been in my opinion.

This is such a powerful and beautifully written book. The descriptions of India, the people, culture and food are so evocative that the stories come fully to life. Whilst parts were heartbreaking, the will of people to question or overcome their circumstances was inspiring.

A vividly expressed book.

Brought my imagination to the brink of its limits. I have never had the pleasure of reading a book like this and am grateful to have been able to read it now.

Oh I am so glad it over!! I love India and I thought I would love this book. The insight into real Indian life was excellent and descriptive, if occasionally difficult to stomach. It is a series of short pieces rather than stories, each one follows a different main character but I felt that they finished mid paragraph! I found it unsatisfying - I prefer a story, start, middle and end. A very good book but it just didn't suit me.

Not my usual book but it was an enjoyable read, a collection of 5 stories from 5 different characters kind of interwoven into one another set in India. I found them quite poignant at times and it made me look at a lot of things about my own life, a good little read..

A state of freedom is set in India, and tells the story of five different people, for example, a cook, a husband with his dancing bear, a young domestic servant who flees when she realises something is very wrong.

All of the people we meet have one thing in common, the desire to improve their lives, and all of them are living away from where they were born and their families.

This book affected me quite a lot. I wasn’t quite sure where it was going after the first chapter, and I didn’t expect the story I got. I don’t have a favourite tale in this book, each person affected me to a different degree, though I think the husband with the dancing bear will stay with me for a long time, and it really got to me quite badly, and I do find myself thinking on it often.

I will put this author on my list as one to go back to, as he already has quite a few books out there. I hope they are all as beautiful, heartbreaking and haunting as this one was. An absolute joy to read.

My thanks to Netgalley and Chatto & Windus for this copy.

Five loosely interconnected short stories set in India, vividly bringing to life the contrast between the poor and more affluent there and how they live alongside each other.

I loved the writing, so good that I became totally absorbed in the stories at times, unaware of the flicking of the pages. Both the scene setting and the portrayal of different characters is absolutely excellent.

However, I was torn between giving it 4 or 5 stars because I had to skim parts of one of the stories due to the detailed description of animal cruelty. I have plumped for 5 stars, though, because the book itself is just so well written, it would seem unfair to give it less.

A great read. I will be reading more by the author.

Many thanks to netgalley and the publishers for a free copy of this book in advance for an honest review.

A moving anthology travelling through different Indian families and a new voice on immigration and the idea of home

Beautiful, poignant and one to savour. I dipped in and out f this but would recommend it.
4 stars from me

A State of Freedom is a collection of five tales of varying length set in contemporary India. The first story follows a US-based lecturer returning to his homeland with his six-year-old son as they explore various tourist attractions. The next story focuses on a London publisher who spends a month with his parents in Bombay every year who becomes friendly with the family servants and then visits their homes in the nearby slums. The third story is of a man and his bear, how he trains it then deserts his family in order to perform on the streets for money as he makes his way to the city where his brother found work in construction. The fourth tale looks at the life paths of two young girls from a remote village, who end up taking very different paths: one taken out of school by her mother to become a servant in a far away city because they need the money, the other joining a guerrilla army. Finally the last tale is a stream of thoughts (without a single bit of punctuation) from a construction worker.

Overall it gave a interesting but rather depressing look at life in India, a system based on inequality, with some people living well and telling servants what to cook, whilst the servants are concerned with getting water from the pump or feeding their family, each living day to day. The tales are all connected in a some way. There are many Indian words that I did not understand, so had no explanation for what they were but when it can to IAD, its meaning was given.

Some of the stories seemed overly long especially the bear one and the construction working whilst short in length was one continual thought (as I mentioned it had no punctuation) which made it difficult to digest. I wouldn't consider this a novel as there isn't really a conclusion to the tales, its more an insight into the lives of 5 people in India.

I received this book from netgalley in return for a honest review.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley, Vintage Publishing, Random House UK, and the author Neal Mukherjee.
A collection of stories from the perspective of five characters, each displaced in his or her own way, set in modern day India.
The five stories are fascinating and hugely involving, staying with you long after you have finished.
In particular, the author's presentation of the stark inequality, the caste system, and the poverty that is still present in modern day India.
Fascinating, and highly recommended.

At the beginning of this intricate, adroit book a man and his young son are being driven through the streets of Agra in India. He is a wealthy academic who left his country for the US 20 years before, his six-year-old son is entirely American. The visit has a melancholic tone about it: the man is uncomfortable and alienated, feeling like a tourist in his birthplace. The child is listless and overwhelmed by the crowds and the touts.

They are both sickened when they witness a worker falling to his death from the scaffolding of a high-rise building.


In the last chapter of the book Neel Mukherjee returns to this doomed worker, taking the reader into his head as he frets and sweats, dreaming of the money this dangerous job will bring, an agonising stream-of-consciousness lament that culminates in his falling, “everything pouring up around the rushing arrow that he cuts through the unimpeded air”.

Between these dramatic bookends Mukherjee interleaves several stories. Another returnee, this time a liberal hipster from London, is writing a book about regional food in India and tries to engage with his family’s cook in Mumbai, to the chagrin of his class-bound mother. Two best friends from a remote Bengali village are pushed in two radical directions: one as a servant in the city, the other into the Maoist guerilla movement.

In another poor village an abusive father finds a bear cub and trains it – cruelly – to dance, and abandons his family to seek his fortune. This man appears at the car window in the first chapter; his brother is the man who falls from the skyscraper. The young servant from the Bengali village is the cook’s assistant in the Mumbai house. Gradually, through echoes and recurring motifs, we learn the characters’ backstories and their destinies, but there are no neat endings. Rather, as the author implies, the frayed ends of their lives reflect the untidy nature of contemporary India.

At times acutely, viscerally realistic, and others dreamlike and fey, this is a startling book that reinforces Mukherjee’s reputation as a writer on the rise.

I very much like books set in Asia, and in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular. The stories they tell are far from the world that I live in, and I like to think that I'm going to learn something about those worlds and peoples.
This novel follows the lives of multiple people who are all connected in some way (even the first person we meet is connected, albeit in a very tenuous way). The stories are fascinating: from the privileged son of a couple who live in Calcutta who is visiting from London for a month, to the young girl (a child) who is sent to work in other people's houses and is treated like a slave in one of the houses she works in. I won't say any more about the stories of these people, but I loved where their stories led them, no matter how uncomfortable it was for me to read.
The writing is beautifully descriptive: it gave a feel for the sights, sounds and smells of where these people lived. It described the caste/ class system of India, the slums and the places where the better off lived. I really enjoyed this book, it really is well worth reading.