"This is why you read fiction at all." The Washington Post echoes what most readers may have felt as they turned the pages of Anuradha Roy’s first novel. An Atlas of Impossible Longing reinforces our faith in the novel as a genre and reminds us of all those stories that took us into an unfamiliar world, leaving us richer and more content.

Published in 16 countries and translated into over a dozen languages, it describes three generations of a dysfunctional Bengali family in rural Songarh, living in a vast house that eventually becomes a symbol of both refuge and regression. Roy deftly captures the relationship of the characters with the house, giving us glimpses of Amulya Babu blossoming around the deafening silence of his home, and Kananbala, who slowly withers, surviving partially only on the memories of sounds she knows from her past.

Published in 2008.