Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The sense of realism was so intense that the painting effortlessly achieved the effect sought by the old Flemish masters: the integration of the spectator into the pictorial whole, persuading him that the space in which he stood was the same as that represented in the painting, as if the picture were a fragment of reality, or reality a fragment of the picture.

Fear so debased people's thinking, they saw deceit in bravery, collaboration in courage.

As long as the son who has moved to the city visits his native village a few years later as if it were some exotic land, the nation to which he belongs will never be modern.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories

KANAI SPOTTED HER the moment he stepped onto the crowded platform: he was deceived neither by her close-cropped black hair nor by her clothes

There was no bindi on her forehead and her arms were free of bangles and bracelets,

It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps, despite her silver ear stud and the tint of her skin, she was not Indian, except by descent.

the neatly composed androgyny of her appearance seemed out of place, almost exotic.

Although unmarried, he was, as he liked to say, rarely single:

Nirmal had smiled in surprise. “What did you expect? A jungle?”