The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

In this novel, Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri portrays recent history and contemporary problems. The story opens when two brothers are caught breaching property and social boundaries to explore the grounds of the Tollygunge Club. The brothers are close, but very different, and their growing up only enhances the contrast between them. As a young man, Udayan sympathizes with the starving poor of his nation and grows enamoured with communist ideals. Soon he's embroiled in an illegal underground party called the Naxalites.

Touching the pulse of our era, this story deals with the life challenges life of people grounded in two countries. Udayan never leaves India, and his closeness to his brother is severed when Subhash leaves to study in Rhode Island. As a young man, Subhash plans to return to India and marry a bride of his parents' choosing, but fate has other plans.

Before he can fully inhabit his new homeland, Subhash must endure the loneliness of marriage to a tragically ill-chosen partner, a bout of single parenthood, and near estrangement from his only daughter. All of this arises from long unspoken secrets of the past, which cast dark shadows over generations who know nothing about them. Yet what happened to Udayan and his parents so long ago in Calcutta has left his brother Subhash adrift in America.