Where to start with Rohinton Mistry

Canadian novelist, born 1952.

Best Rohinton Mistry book to start with: A Fine Balance (1995), on 6 of the 18 lists it could have made.

A Fine Balance is the Mistry to read. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996. It is long, set in an unnamed Indian city in the 1970s during the Emergency, and it follows four people who end up sharing a flat. It is easy to follow and hard to put down, though some of it is painful.

If you want a shorter book, Such a Long Journey is the one. His first novel, shortlisted in 1991, is set in Bombay in 1971 and follows a Parsi bank clerk whose life is pulled off course by a favour for a friend. Family Matters, shortlisted in 2002, is about a Parsi family looking after an ailing, difficult father, and it is warmer and slower. Read it last, once you know the world he writes about.