Tuesday Intros, The Lives of Others

I'm joining Diane who hosts Tuesday Intros where we share the opening few lines from a book of our choice. I took Neel Mukherjee's novel away with me on holiday. It's a sizeable book of over five hundred pages and I was able to read throughout the days without the interruptions that would occur at home.  

Prologue May 1966

A third of the way through the half-mile walk from the landlord's house to his hut, Nitai Das's feet began to sway. Or maybe it is the head-spin again. He sits down on the lifeless field he has to cross before he can reach his hut. There isn't a shred of shade anywhere. The May sun is an unforgiving fire; it burns his blood dry. It also burns away any lingering grain of hope that the monsoons will arrive in time to end this third year of drought.

Our book group discussed it over Sunday lunch when we got home. Only half of us had read the whole novel. It's a hard read with deeply painful and unpleasant elements and a large cast of characters. I had to constantly flick back to the family tree set out  at the start of the book. Those who had read it on kindle didn't have that advantage and had great difficulty working out who was who. 

You can see from the photo below that Himself was not very engaged! He was one of several who gave up half way through.

Would you read it, even though you know it's going to be a pretty grim story, based on the true situation in India?!