Shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize, this assured, gentle first novel centres on the perplexed Gustad Nobel, an engagingly likable Everyman figure quietly working in a bank and intent on the best for his lazy eldest son. The combination of his son's folly and his daughter's illness tests Gustad, yet Mistry's touch balances the tragic dimension with many comic moments. Mistry's outstanding, often philosophical debut ably represents India's lively, formidable post-colonial literature at its most humane. Mistry's A Fine Baldance (Faber, £7.99 in UK) is almost twice the length of Such a Long Journey - also Booker shortlisted - but is not half as good. It is really more about India than the characters who populate its pages. The old fashioned epic narrative lumbers uncomfortably between the small lives of individuals and the massive agony of a country's history.
