All the Lives We Never Lived

Anuradha Roy blends historical fact and remarkable real-life characters into her tale, which takes freedom, in all its messy complexity, as its theme … Amid the atmospheric detailing there are pin-sharp modern resonances with modern India’s nationalism and punishing patriarchy. - The Times.

A writer of great subtlety and intelligence … a beautifully written and compelling story of how families fall apart and what remains of the aftermath. - Guardian

All the Lives We Never Lived is a moving and beautiful story of loss, of the lives of those beloved to us. What makes this novel so special is the sinuous way Anuradha Roy seamlessly and masterfully shuttles between time, overlaying the past with the present, mystery with knowledge to cumulatively create a brilliant tapestry that is the story

Taking in the second world war, the fight for Indian independence and occasionally fast-forwarding into the 1990s, All the Lives We Never Lived is ultimately both a work of beautifully realised history and personal narrative. The cover blurb tells us that Roy is ‘one of India’s greatest living authors’. On this evidence it’s hard to disagree. - Spectator.

Poetic, elegiac … Questioning and subtle … A paean to motherhood, to loss, to the ways in which we grow and the way a life is shaped and can be unshaped … Roy’s eye is tender … The scope of All the Lives We Never Lived is vast but also personal. - Irish Times.

From Sleeping on Jupiter to this book, Roy seems to be bettering her own brilliance. Though the narration is effortless, Roy’s research and imagination in recreating a bygone era shines out. This is an excellent, unputdownable book - The Hindu

Every once in a great while, a novel comes along to remind you why you rummage through shelves in the first place. Why you peck like a magpie past the bright glitter of publishers’ promises. Why you read…This, you think, is the feeling you had as you read Great Expectations or Sophie’s Choice or The Kite Runner. This is why you read fiction at all. - Washington Post, on An Atlas of Impossible Longing

Roy’s writing is a joy. - Financial Times.