GREAT THINGS

The Way Things Were (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Aatish Taseer's panoramic novel of modern India, takes its title from the literal meaning of the Sanskrit word for history, Itihasa. And it is, indeed, a novel where characters are "encircled by history." When Toby, an exiled Sanskrit scholar, dies, it's left to his son, Skanda, to return to India to immerse his ashes. Meanwhile, Skanda ponders not just his father's intellectual disillusionment but also his parents' failed marriage set against the violent flash points of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. "Our literature is crammed full of big events. Of riots, and partitions, and emergencies," Skanda says. Taseer's great gift is to locate the fault lines— of both individuals and a nation—in the midst of epic upheavals.

ANDERSON TEPPER