One of our Debuts of the Year 2011.

February 2011 Debut of the Month.

A Life Apart  is a scalding novel about dislocations and alienations, about the tenuous and unconscious intersections of lives and histories and about the consolations of storytelling.

Win a luxury craft weekend break on Dartmoor

Dartmoor.co.uk has teamed up with Lovereading to offer one lucky winner the chance to win a prize package of accommodation for 2 at Lurcombe luxury apartments during the Contemporary Craft Festival in Bovey Tracey on June 7–9th, including day tickets to attend the festival itself plus Dinner for two (including a bottle of wine) in one of our leading gastro pubs the Rock Inn and a delicious lunch for two at Home Farm Café set in the scenic grounds of the National Trust Estate at Parke in Bovey Tracey.

Please note that this draw is open only for UK residents and is free to enter. Draw closes on 27 May 2013. The winner will be chosen randomly from all entrants.The winners will be notified by 1 June 2013. The decision of the judges is final. By providing us with your contact details when you enter the competition you are agreeing to future contact from Dartmoor.co.uk and it's selected partners.

Please CLICK HERE to see the specific terms and conditions linked to the prize.

Synopsis

Ritwik Ghosh, twenty-two and recently orphaned, finds the chance to start a new life when he arrives in England from Calcutta. But to do so, he must not only relive his entire past but also make sense of his relationship with his mother - scarred, abusive and all-consuming. But Oxford holds little of the salvation Ritwik is looking for. Instead he moves to London, where he drops out of official existence into a shadowy hinterland of illegal immigrants. However, the story that Ritwik writes to stave off his loneliness - a Miss Gilby who teaches English, music and Western manners to the wife of a liberal zamindar - begins to find ghostly echoes in his life with his aged landlady, Anne Cameron. But then, one night, in the badlands of King's Cross, Ritwik runs into the suave, unfathomable Zafar bin Hashm. As present and past of several lives collide, Ritwik's own goes into free fall.

About the Author

Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta and educated in Calcutta, Oxford, and Cambridge. He reviews fiction for The Times and Time Magazine Asia and has written for the TLS, the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the New York Times, the Boston Review, the Sunday Telegraph and Biblio. He is also a contributing editor to the Boston Review. He divides his time between London and the USA. A Life Apart is his first novel. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation