Choice

"Searing, poetic and beautifully brutal, Choice reveals just how far the imagination—when buoyed by courage and conscience—can travel. One realization I take with me from Mukherjee’s intrepid prose is this: to be honest in our living, and to refuse despair, is to assent to a whole new vocabulary of humility." - Tracy K. Smith, author of To Free the Captives

"Neel Mukherjee is a great novelist…He knows how to clothe ethical conflicts with sweeping narrative and convincing detail. The range of his knowledge—from London intellectual and professional life today to the precarious hardships of the ‘ultra-poor’ in Bengal—is shockingly deep. He is a writer of genius." - Edmund White, author of The Humble Lover

"Choice is Neel Mukherjee’s best book yet: a brooding meditation on the complexities of agency and duty, freedom and guilt, in a savagely unequal world. It’s a vital, haunting, devastating read." - Sarah Waters, author of The Paying Guests

"A searing indictment of neoliberal folly, a profound and beautiful meditation on compassion, Choice is exactly the kind of novel we need now—the kind that nobody but Neel Mukherjee can write." - Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting

"A magnificent accomplishment. In each panel of this masterful triptych—or each movement of this classical sonata—exquisite prose gradually crescendos to jaw-dropping revelations…Choice is a deeply human novel, and a humane one…We come to realize, to feel through experiencing the successive waves of the novel’s movements, that a human life is not simply the result of rational choices but rather, as Neel Mukherjee puts it, the lull between them—a rich and swaying lull, thick with love and responsibility." - Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows

"This book speaks to our present moment with such intelligence as to move it from the merely brilliant to the vitally important. Kaleidoscopic yet intimate, philosophical yet affecting, Choice is a stunning, haunting accomplishment." - Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth

"Choice burns brightly with fierce intelligence, with wisdom and compassion, and achieves what so few novels even attempt: it makes the reader think deeply about how we’ve come to live this way, at what cost, and about those who pay the greatest price." - Monica Ali, author of Love Marriage

"Neel Mukherjee’s keen eyes, formidable intelligence, masterful scalpel, and compassionate approach offer us reassurance and hope without any illusion." - Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose

"Choice is perhaps the most brilliant novel I’ve read this year. It is the reminder of why we need fiction. Profound and devastating, Choice is as dark and hauntingly beautiful as it gets. A masterpiece of the highest order." - A.M. Homes, author of The Unfolding

"Here is a magnificently clear-eyed portrait of our times lit equally by sorrow and rage. Neel Mukherjee is a superb writer, and Choice is his greatest work yet." - Michelle de Kretser, author of Scary Monsters