In the tradition of novels in English about India, Bharati Mukherjee's novels carry a special weight. Unlike E. M. Forster, Paul Scott, and J. G. Farrell, she writes as a novelist who grew up in Calcutta, knows Indian, and especially Bengali, culture intimately, and brings to her books this personal insight as it has been modified and refocused by many years of living in North America. Whether she is writing about Indians living in India or in North America, she adds to the authority of her background an acute sense of the violence and chaos, however restrained, which can lie beneath the surface of a society, old or new, or of a person. Traditions can serve to prevent the victory of violent acts; they can also precipitate violence by their very restrictiveness.

Bharati Mukherjee was born in Calcutta, the daughter of Sudhir Lal Mukherjee, a Brahmin pharmaceutical chemist...