This is Where the Serpent Lives

Selected as a book of the year by the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Vogue, and many moreShortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political FictionFinalist for the Kirkus Prize‘Brutal, funny and brilliantly told’ Patrick Gale, Guardian‘All the makings of a classic’ Vogue‘Recalls the power of the Russian classics’ New York TimesIn This is Where the Serpent Lives, Daniyal Mueenuddin unravels the life of a landowning family and the people who work for them over the course of half a century.From gangsters and socialites, politicians to tenants, the urban elite to feudal lords, Mueenuddin’s characters are bound to the land as they strive for money, power and place. Here is a world where extreme wealth and extreme poverty live side by side; where the ancient, immoveable pillars of caste, capital and authority collide with themodern forces of late globalisation; and where corruption is everywhere.‘One of those novels that renews your faith in the possibilities of novels’ Irish Times‘Masterful storytelling … Feels at once like a classic’ Daily Mail‘Beautifully written, original, modern, vivid, beautiful, heartbreaking yet brutal’ Simon Sebag Montefiore ‘A work of mosaic structure and expansive power’ Financial Times‘A shining example of the very best literature’ Washington Post‘A literary magician’ The Times‘All the makings of a classic’ Vogue‘A marvellous, layered study of class and power and culture – rich as a nineteenth-century novel’ Guardian