A memorable experience is in store for the reader of David Davidar's The House of Blue Mangoes. In a similar fashion to Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, Davidar's ambitious novel set in India relates many stories in one, each ineluctably merging into the other. We are shown three generations of an old family in the oceanside village of Chevathar. The patriarch Solomon strives to maintain equilibrium as caste struggles begin to create harsh conflict in the village, while his sons endure triumph and disaster as India inaugurates its battle for independence and his grandson, who may be the last of the line, undertakes his own bid for independence. All of these characters are drawn with a mercurial vividness, and Davidar has a Tolstoyan sense of the larger canvas—his epic covers the spectrum of heroes and rogues, clans and dynasties, the ugly and the beautiful.