Books like Jasmine

“Can wanting be fatal?”This captivated me. It’s about hardships, and fighting to overcome them. It’s about illegal immigration, why it can happen, and the terrifying journey it can be. There are vivid, even shocking descriptions of life in India, but to me this is a very American story—scrappy and full of ambition.Jasmine undergoes multiple transformations along her journey—to her surroundings, her home, her family and her name. Mukherjee takes us back and forth in time through these worlds, which is a difficult thing to do, but she makes it look easy. Her writing is enchanting, giving us poetic language, symbols, and themes, but with such a light touch that her words go down remarkably easy.A timely and important tale, beautifully told.“We are the outcasts and deportees, strange pilgrims visiting outlandish shrines, landing at the end of tarmacs, ferried in old army trucks where we are roughly handled and taken to roped-off corners of waiting rooms where surly, barely wakened customs guards await their bribe. We are dressed in shreds of national costumes, out of season, the wilted plumage of intercontinental vagabondage. We ask only one thing: to be allowed to land; to pass through; to continue.”