When Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance was published in 1996, it was greeted with unanimous praise, and, in December 2001, it was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Now, Mistry gives us a novel that confirms him as a writer whose work is "worthy of the 19th century masters" (Time).

The setting is Bombay, mid-1990s. Nariman Vakeel, suffering from Parkinson's disease, is the elderly patriarch of a small, discordant family. He and his two middle-aged stepchildren—Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent, occupy a once-elegant apartment whose ruin progresses as rapidly as Nariman's disease. When his illness is compounded by a broken ankle, Coomy plots to turn his round-the-clock care over to her younger, sweet-tempered half sister—living with her husband and two sons in an already over-crowded apartment—knowing that Roxana will not refuse. What ensues is a great unraveling, and repair, of the family, and a revelation of its love-torn past.