The Complex - by Karan Mahajan (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A brilliant, sweeping, tour de force moving between America and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Editors' Choice - A New Yorker Best Book of the Year So Far - A Most Anticipated Book of 2026: The Washington Post, Vulture, Lit Hub, The Millions, Chicago Review of Books

"A sweeping tale of political machinations, family drama, betrayal and social transformation."
--The New York Times's "32 Novels We're Excited About This Spring"

"[A] magisterial performance. . . Mahajan is a confident, ambitious and increasingly important writer."
--Jonathan Dee, The New York Times Book Review

"A testament to Mahajan's genius. . . . Beautiful and unforgettable"
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A brilliant, sweeping tour de force moving between the US and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family -- from the author of the National Book Award finalist The Association of Small Bombs

In a sprawling complex in Delhi, the sons and daughters of SP Chopra, one of India's political architects, live together vying for influence in a family shaped by the great man's legacy. By the late 1970s, his descendants are scrambling to define their own futures in a still-young nation on the brink of transformation.

Sachin Chopra leaves for America, with his bride Gita following not long after, as the newlyweds are eager to forge their own lives beyond the pressures of the family compound. Yet Delhi remains an inescapable force, one that keeps pulling them back, even as Gita is menaced by Sachin's predatory uncle, Laxman. A man of restless ambition, Laxman ascends through the ranks of a rising Hindu nationalist movement, caught between his political aspirations and his personal transgressions. Meanwhile, Vibha, his sister, tries to keep the peace and the reputation of the family intact even as she wrestles with her own exile.

As India erupts in violence and long-buried secrets come to light, the embattled Chopras must reckon with the cost of power, the weight of tradition, and the shifting nature of love and allegiance. Equal parts brilliant family saga and piercing political drama, The Complex is a virtuosic novel of revenge and redemption, ambition and undoing, loyalty and love, by one of the most lauded voices in contemporary fiction.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Complex

"A sweeping tale of political machinations, family drama, betrayal and social transformation."
--The New York Times's "32 Novels We're Excited About This Spring"

"[A] magisterial performance . . . Mahajan is a confident, ambitious and increasingly important writer."
--Jonathan Dee, The New York Times Book Review

"[An] update of Tolstoy and Chekhov . . . [Mahajan] finely depicts tragic flaws and doomed relationships . . . Mahajan packs 19th-century pleasures into a very contemporary tale about the rise of ethno-nationalism and the insidious damage of corruption."
--Boris Kachka, The Atlantic Monthly

"[A] grand social novel constructed with dazzlingly modern ingenuity. . . . Again and again, I was reminded of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections -- the way wit, psychological shrewdness, and cultural insight can keep a story from gagging on its own bile. Like the complex itself, this capacious novel is constantly evolving and reinventing itself."
--Ron Charles (Substack)

"If The Complex earns the reputation as one of the first great novels 'about' Modi's India, it will be deserved. . . . This is probably due in part to the fact that, in the vein of Mann or Stendhal, The Complex also strives, in the most rewarding way, to be a book about everything: left and right, love and power, history and time--that is, the pull of future and past on a country demanding something better than what its politicians in--New Delhi have so far delivered. . . . Mahajan's Great Indian Novel makes room for all of these and more."
--BookForum

"A superb family saga . . . You start by nodding in appreciation at Mahajan's observant character portraits . . . It's a wonderfully immersive and in-the-moment work. There's beauty here."
--The Guardian

"An anguished, intelligent study of ambition decoupled from principles, and of the complacency and fear that allows it to thrive."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Gripping. . . . A family this unhappy may remind readers of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. . . . The Complex is a sad, transfixing, and, yes, complex novel."
--The Washington Examiner

"[Written with] tension, tenderness and tenacity. Mahajan remains contagiously courageous and (narratively) humble. Here he deftly untangles how 'sexual proclivities' rooted at the familial level can entangle with political upheaval. . . . Mahajan simultaneously shatters and showcases Hindu nationalism. He strips down the real stuff of reverse-immigrant struggles as eidetic text to be read. He pushes cultural boundaries in painfully truthful ways, strangling both stigmas against sexual shame and silence amid sexual violence. . . . This pursuit of this truth makes him not only a liberating literary executor but also a worthy moral educator."
--Los Angeles Times

"Mahajan depicts a sprawling extended family, most of whom live literally on top of one another in a cramped 'complex' of apartments in Delhi, India. Scheming, rumors, insults, secrets, love, lust and violence swirl within the family, a microcosm of the chaotic politics in India during the 1980s and '90s. Richly drawn characters at the center propel the narrative forward, with all their strengths and fatal flaws on full display."
--The Denver Post

"While the novel is embedded in modern Indian political history, Mahajan unobtrusively provides all the contextual information needed to understand the characters and their dilemmas. But this absorbing and accomplished novel is far more than a dressed-up history lesson. In Mahajan's hands, the astonishing violence of the Chopra family comes to seem the terrible result of ordinary misfortunes, thwarted ambitions and petty envies that could blight any family caught in similar economically and emotionally skimpy circumstances."
--The Providence Eye

"For readers drawn to messy relationships and sharply drawn social dynamics, The Complex delivers."
--Goop.com

"[A] serious, carefully constructed novel . . . Mahajan's Delhi is rendered with an accuracy that feels almost archaeological . . . Where the novel is most illuminating is in its portrait of characters that a younger, more globalized generation of Indians would dismiss with a mildly condescending 'uncle' or 'aunty, ' those figures of matrimonial obsession and suburban intrusion who populate wedding shamianas and family drawing rooms. Mahajan takes them seriously as moral and psychological beings. . . . Mahajan does not flinch and does not relent."
--Asian Review of Books

"[Mahajan] clearly understands the psychology of family, messy as it always is. Mahajan evokes the clashing landscapes of India and Michigan with a sure hand, and displays a keen understanding of Indian society and politics. Though the reader learns in the opening pages that one main character will be murdered by a relative, the novel's final chapters still manage to be shocking, which is a testament to Mahajan's genius. This novel is beautiful and unforgettable. A masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, by a talented and self-assured writer."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Exquisite. . . . With astonishing economy, clarity and suggestiveness, Mahajan creates a memorable family and depicts a conflicted India lurching into the present. This piercing novel is a book to read and read again."
--BookPage (starred review)

"Long in the works, long anticipated by his fans. . . . Mahajan has created something savor-worthy: a family epic that takes place in both India and America, as the Chopra family attempts to keep itself together in the face of political unrest and relationship fractures. Mahajan writes with grace and precision, is able to depict both horrors and joys, violence and tenderness in equal measure: the arrival of The Complex is sure to be a literary event."
--Julia Hass, Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026

"The Complex is an extraordinary gift to its lucky readers: an enormously full and brilliantly structured novel whose characters come to feel as familiar--and as bottomlessly mysterious--as one's own family. I was spellbound by the ramifying dramas of the Chopras, whose strong roots intertwine below their Delhi complex during decades of sweeping global and national change. I am awestruck by what Karan Mahajan has accomplished in The Complex, and I never wanted this book to end."
--Karen Russell, author of National Book Award finalist The Antidote

"A delicious page-turner about familial jealousy and revenge that, in the Dostoyevskian tradition, doubles as a masterful investigation of the slipperiness of power in a changing and modernizing world. The Complex is Mahajan's most exciting, virtuosic novel yet."
--Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao

"In the tradition of Tolstoy, Karan Mahajan has written a family saga and a historical epic that describes humanity with absolute fidelity--no kinder or crueler, wiser or duller, grander or punier than it really is. In The Complex, not only is the personal political, but the political is a duck blind for the personal, demonstrating how family secrets and failed businesses create demagogues, martyrs, and murderers. This is a farsighted and serious novel, and a monument to radicalized times."
--Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection, longlisted for the National Book Award

"Epic in scope, wonderous in its summoning of distinct characters, vital in its weaving of family and politics. This is a miraculous novel."
--Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of National Book Award finalist Chain-Gang All-Stars

"This novel's rare achievement lies in its masterful portrayal of the intimate relationship between personal lives and political realities. Through the story of a family, it captures the larger movements shaping the nation, revealing how political and social transformations seep into everyday life and quietly shape human choices. . . . Through a powerful mode of storytelling, Mahajan constructs the intricate connections between a society's moral upheavals and its political and familial aspirations. The strength, intensity, and momentum of his narrative are such that nothing needs to be pointed out deliberately; everything unfolds with organic necessity. There is a constant sense of danger lurking beneath the story, lending the narrative a palpable, high-stakes intensity that holds the reader in its grip."
--Vivek Shanbhag, author of Ghachar Ghochar

"To watch the wily Chopras jostle for dominion--not just over the crumbling walls of their shared home, but over the very historical and moral record of their age--is pure pleasure. Mahajan is, as always, a political anatomist blessed with a comedian's eye for the absurd, and The Complex is a singular portrait of a family as riven and fractious--and eternally surprising--as the country that produced it."
--Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field

"Riveting and unputdownable--Shakespearean storytelling. Karan Mahajan's best work yet."
--Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

About the Author

Karan Mahajan is the author of The Association of Small Bombs, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. His debut novel, Family Planning, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He has been selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and other venues. He is an associate professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.