The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

When their English cousin, Sophie,  and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. 

This exotic novel focuses on forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala. Twins Rahel and Estha fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.  Their eccentric relatives range from blind granny, ex-nun, and Uncle Chacko, a pickle baron and radical Marxist with roaming hands.