Family Life

2015 | Fiction & Poetry

Winner of the 2015 Folio Prize.





Read our interview with Akhil, in which he explains why the novel took twelve and half years to write, why he felt it was better to present his family's story as fiction and why pigeon-holing authors as 'immigrant writers' can warp readers' perception of their work.





For eight-year-old Ajay Mishra and his older brother Birju, family life in Delhi in the late 1970s follows a comfortable, predictable routine: bathing on the roof, queuing for milk, playing day-long games of cricket in the street. Everything changes when their father finds a job in America - a land of carpets and elevators, swimsuits and hot water - and the Mishras, envy of their neighbourhood back home, become the latest unknowns in the vast expanse of New York. Life in America is extraordinary, and as snows and summers come and go the brothers adjust to their exciting new world of prosperity, girls and 24-hour TV. But then comes the hot, sultry day when everything falls apart: tragedy turns the Mishras' American dream into a living nightmare and young Ajay finds himself lost and virtually orphaned in a land that is not his own.

Akhil Sharma (Author)