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

"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."
--Karen Russell, bestselling author of The Antidote, longlisted for the National Book Award

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 ruthless 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

Advance Praise for The Complex

"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, bestselling author of The Antidote, longlisted for the National Book Award

"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

About the Author

Karan Mahajan is the author of The Association of Small Bombs, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. His debut novel Family Planning was a finalist for the International 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 in Literary Arts at Brown University.