Summary

The Shadow Lines is comprised of personal and familial anecdotes recounted by an unnamed narrator. The narrator is male, and he was born and raised in Calcutta, India. He begins the book in 1939, 13 years before he was born. In that year, his father’s aunt, Mayadebi, visited England with her husband and their son Tribid. Tribid’s father needed to go to England to have a medical operation performed. The narrator has always felt a deep connection to those family members and to England, even before he ever visited England himself. When the narrator was a boy, he always loved to see Tribid, who visited the narrator and his parents occasionally. The narrator’s paternal grandmother, Tha’mma—who was also Mayadebi’s sister—lived with the narrator and his parents. Tribid’s father was a diplomat for India’s Foreign Service Department...