The majority of this book follows two separate story lines. The first is about three generations of a Bengali family sharing the same large house. I enjoyed learning about the Bengali culture and the family dynamics were quite interesting. There were one to two chapters about several of the family members in the different generations. While this was interesting I felt like I never got to know any one of these characters very well. It felt like we were finally starting to get to know a character and then the chapter ended and we were off to someone else. The other story line was the diary of the eldest grandson who left home to be a part of a communist revolution. We did get to know this character better and I felt this section seemed to relay a very good sense of difficult life was for the rural poor in this country. However, this story line did involve some very intense and descriptive violence that was upsetting to read. It felt realistic to the story I was just not prepared for that when I picked up the book.

I won this book from Good Reads and put off reading for a while due to the length. It was not the quickest moving book and took me a while to read. I would never have read the book if I had not won it but overall I am glad that I did read it. I was able to learn about a culture and a time about which I knew virtually nothing.