When Skanda's father Toby dies, estranged from Skanda's mother and from the India he once loved, it falls to Skanda to return his body to his birthplace. This is a journey that takes him halfway around the world and deep into the story of three generations of his family, whose factures, frailties and toxic legacies he has always sought to elude.

Both an intimate portrait of a marriage and its aftershocks, and a panoramic vision of India in transition, The Way Things Were is a magisterial novel about the pressures of history upon the present moment. Set at flashpoints in 1975, 1984, 1992 and in modern Delhi, it has the epic reach and thrilling ambition and the potential to become a classic of its time.