The Lowland by Jumpha Lahiri

This book did not get uniformly positive reviews but I loved it.  It has been short listed for the Man Booker prize, so at least some people agreed with me.

The story revolves around two brothers born 15 months apart.  Subhash is the elder and more cautious brother while Udayan is the bad boy brother.  They are growing up in Bengali, and they are so close that Udayan says that Subhash is the other half of him.  But early in adulthood that changes quite dramatically.  Udayan gets involved with the communist terrorist group Naxalbari and Subhash goes to the United States to study.

What happens then is an example of how tragedy can ripple out across generations.  Udayan breaks all the rules--he marries a woman that his parents disapprove of, for reasons that are not clear--is it that she is not worthy of him or that they did not pick her?  In any case, when the inevitable happens, when Udayan is killed, she is left behind.  She is a serious student at University and they agree completely that they should not bring a child into this world they are leading--but when Udayan dies, she is pregnant, and that is the spark that ignites across the rest of the story.  I do not want to give too much away, but the rest of the story is a message about how one person with one choice and one tragic ending can affect all those who love them and try to hang on to them.  A fabulous story about lose and longing, and maybe at the end, a little bit of redemption.