The Complex by Karan Mahajan review – a superb family saga set in Delhi

At once a grand sweep through history and a domestic novel of petty differences, this tale of corruption and betrayal is packed with drama We learn about the murder of the Chopra clan’s shifty, crude, charismatic patriarch Laxman in the opening pages of The Complex.

Twenty-five years have passed, but the stain on this once-respectable Punjabi family remains. The man who did it, Laxman’s nephew Brij, has served his jail time and is about to be released.

Some relatives think Brij is too dangerous, too shameful to return to the family home, but his son Mohit decides the pair will live together – and rewinds the clock to tell the story of the decades leading up to the crime.

Karan Mahajan’s warmly received first two works, Family Planning and The Association of Small Bombs, explored individual lives alongside larger forces – urban development in the former, a car bomb’s traumatic aftermath in the latter.

His excellent third novel has Delhi at its heart, but also visits Indian villages and cities, the American midwest and London, its short chapters flitting between different members of the Chopra family.

You start by nodding in appreciation at Mahajan’s observant character portraits; before you know it you’re waist-deep in frustration, corruption and betrayal, as the book ranges through politics, faith, migration, infidelity and entrepreneurship.

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