A Fine Balance

By: Rohinton Mistry

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers - a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village - will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

©1995 Rohinton Mistry (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

what a gem

the entire human emotional gamut lives in every page of this extraordinary story. Narrated superbly! don't miss it

A fabulous read

Possibly the best book I have ever read. Heartbreaking and warming in equal measure. Memorable!

This book broke me slowly and then shattered me completely

Rohinton Mistry paints a vivid, aching portrait of life in India during the Emergency, weaving together four lives bound by poverty, politics, and pain.

The character work is flawless. The prose? Beautiful. The humanity? Deep and unflinching. You fall in love with these characters not because they’re perfect, but because they’re trying. They hope, they laugh, they endure.

And then… that ending.
What. The. Hell.

What a book!

A funny, sad, heartwarming, heartbreaking triumph! I loved the pictures, the sounds and the smells and emotions Rohinton’s writing brings to his readers.

great one time listen

There is a gravity that pulls you into all the characters life, quickly sucking you into their world. I consumed this audiobook at record speeds but I felt the ending left me wanting more, having more questions than I anticipated- this not sure if the payoff was enough. I would recommend as that could have been the author's intention, sometimes misery is just that, unglorified without a full circle moment...it just goes on and on.