If I Could Tell You (Paperback)

The story I shall tell you is about failures. It is largely a story of hope thwarted, of promises broken. One of the reasons why I wanted to write these letters to you was to explain, but it was also, as though through writing them, I would come to understand. Through the writing, I hope to glimpse, before it is too late, some sort of pattern, some structure to the random events of the past few years. Words mean more than anything else to me. Perhaps they will to you one day too when you read this.' An unnamed narrator writes a series of letters to his daughter, explaining how his life has gone wrong. The letters, spanning the narrator's life in India and England and having as their unwavering focus his daughter and the relationship between them, speak of hopes unfulfilled, of promises broken. In prose of extraordinary beauty and power, Soumya Bhattacharya crafts a story of longing, love and loss. It is a story about how luck and chance and a twist in events can irrevocably alter our lives, a story of how love can lead to catastrophe and ultimately, a story about the new India and how its economy can make and then break a man who always wanted only to be no more and no less - than a writer. Haunting and tender, this is a remarkable novel from one of the most distinctive voices of his generation.