It is the late 1970s. India has been wrenched by the Emergency. Like countless Indian children, Ajay and Birju are taken by their parents to America so they can have a better life. In New York, their flat is tiny, the students at their school racist. Like all striving Asian children, Ajay and Birju forge ahead, pushed on by their ambitious parents. But then everything changes. Birju has an accident that leaves him brain-damaged, and the world around Ajay collapses. His father begins to drink, his mother takes to prayer and it is Ajay who must now bear all the guilty weight of their love. Dark, sardonic and written with biting wit and observation, Family Life is a superb portrait of one dysfunctional family that speaks to all families.

Akhil Sharma is the author of the novel An Obedient Father, for which he won the 2001 PEN/Hemingway Award. He has also published stories in, among others, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Best American Short Stories anthology. He lives in New York.