book review: The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar
The basics: The World We Found is Thrity Umrigar's fifth novel. It's the story of four best friends, Nishta, Laleh, Kavita and Armaiti, who went to college together in Bombay in the late 1970's. Armaiti left for graduate school in the U.S., but when she is diagnosed with a brain tumor, her one wish is for her three friends to make the journey to visit her in the U.S. My thoughts: The characters in this novel grabbed my attention immediately. Despite introducing so many characters in the first few pages, I never struggled to differentiate among them. The four women and their friendship are the crux of this novel, and I appreciated that Umrigar told the story in the present day while offering glimpses of the past. This novel also offers an impressive breadth of Indian history, from the demonstrations of liberal college students in the late 1970's to the Hindu/Muslim riots of the early 1990's to the state of religious attitudes today. While these issues play a stron...