Family Matters
By Rohinton Mistry
(Emblem Editions, Paperback, 9780771061288, 480pp.)
Publication Date: February 25, 2003
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback
Categories: Literary
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Set in Bombay in the mid-1990s, Family Matters tells a story of familial love and obligation, of personal and political corruption, of the demands of tradition and the possibilities for compassion. Nariman Vakeel, the patriarch of a small discordant family, is beset by Parkinson’s and haunted by memories of his past. He lives with his two middle-aged stepchildren, Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. But the burden of the illness worsens the already strained family relationships. Soon, their sweet-tempered half-sister, Roxana, is forced to assume sole responsibility for her bedridden father. And Roxana’s husband, besieged by financial worries, devises a scheme of deception involving his eccentric employer at a sporting goods store, setting in motion a series of events that leads to the narrative’s moving outcome. Family Matters has all the richness, the gentle humour, and the narrative sweep that have earned Mistry the highest of accolades around the world.
Rohinton Mistry is the author of a collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), and three internationally acclaimed novels, Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995), and Family Matters (2002). His fiction has won many prestigious international awards, including The Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Governor General’s Award, the Canada-Australia Literary Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, The Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for Fiction. A Fine Balance was also an Oprah’s Book Club® selection.
Born in Bombay in 1952, Rohinton Mistry came to Canada in 1975.
“Once again, Rohinton Mistry has written an absolutely fabulous novel.”
–Noah Richler, National Post
“He ought to be considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive.”
–Atlantic Monthly
“The reader is moved, even to tears, by these rites of passage among characters we have lived with long enough to feel as family. . . . The exercise of compassion, by the writer and then by the reader, remains one of the novel’s chief duties and complex pleasures.”
–John Updike, The New Yorker
“A magnetic tale that comes as close to perfect as a novel can get.”
–Booklist
“Magnificent.…Family Matters could well be one of the finest novels most of us will ever read. It is certainly a masterpiece.”
–Irish Times
“Warm, humane, tender and bittersweet.…The author of A Fine Balance again explores the tightrope act that constitutes life on this planet.…This beautifully paced, elegantly expressed novel is notable for the breadth of its vision as well as its immensely appealing characters and enticing plot.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“For the purposefulness and clarity of his moral vision, there is no better writer living in Canada today.…Mistry weaves a marvelous tapestry.…”
–Montreal Gazette
“Family Matters moves and engages at every moment.…Mistry is among the most distinguished of the Indian writers currently visible, partly because he does not try to make India itself his main subject.…His real territory if the divided heart.”
–Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books
“Heart-breaking and utterly beguiling.…”
–The Herald (U.K.)
“Compassionately attentive to the blend of tragedy and comedy and strikes the notes of each with grace, precision and tenderness.…”
–Edmonton Journal
“Impressive. . . . Wry and richly perceptive.…”
–Times Literary Supplement
“A giant among writers.…A vibrant and full-bodied novel.”
–Chicago Tribune
“Compelling and rich.…”
–Globe and Mail
“With deceptive simplicity, Mistry draws his fine balance between scepticism and affirmation, faith and bigotry, family nurture and control.”
–The Guardian (U.K.)
[He is] blessed by talent as natural as breathing.…”
–Maclean’s
“His prose style is as clear as a pane of newly polished glass.”
–The Economist
“Mistry remains one of our most important writers –one of our most important moral voices.…”
–Quill & Quire
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