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Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.6/5)
Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Family Saga

Book Review:
''All the Lives We Never Lived'' by Anuradha Roy is a beautifully written, deeply moving, and thought-provoking novel that explores the intersections of personal and political history. This book was longlisted for the prestigious Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

The novel opens with a haunting line: ''In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman.'' From there, Roy weaves a story of family, loss, and the search for identity, set against the backdrop of India's struggle for independence and the rise of nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s. The protagonist, Myshkin, grapples with the abandonment by his mother, Gayatri, a free-spirited artist, and later pieces together the events that led her to leave for Dutch-held Bali.

As Kamila Shamsie writes in the Guardian: ''A beautifully written and compelling story… A writer of great subtlety and intelligence.'' Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen, calls it ''An astonishing new novel… A writer of extreme brilliance, humanity and grace.''

This is a novel that resonates deeply with our own times, exploring themes of nationalism, freedom, and the choices we make. Highly recommended for readers of literary and historical fiction.