From Knopf Publishing Group:

An absorbing, exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a mans life, an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn

Jadunath Kunwars beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwells birthplace, Jadus mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He befriends poets and politicians. He becomes a historian. And he has a daughter, Jugnu, a television journalist with a career in the United Stateswhose own story recasts the past in a new light. Piercing, fleet-footed, and undeniably resonant, here is a novel from a singularly gifted writer about how we tell stories and write history, how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements, how no single life is without consequence.