Anna is a typical product of the UK’s post-war BabyBoomer generation – except she’s Anglo Indian and she plans to change the world
Anna turns on, tunes in and drops out, drifts through the sexual and feminist revolutions of the 1970s, does the usual divorce and single-parenting and returns to university at 30 to read politics with a small child in tow.
Somehow she survives the Thatcher era and a string of career ups and downs until at 50 she’s a bored provincial journalist, in a bad relationship, frustrated by the inequalities in her own life, in the multicultural community around her and in the wider world.
2001 is a watershed year for Anna and the world.
Her mother, Farida, dies suddenly in January, leaving a letter to be read after her death, containing a bombshell that makes her re-think their troubled and estranged relationship.
From the day of her mother’s bleak funeral, which coincides with the Gujarat earthquake, Anna’s whole life is shaken apart.
She finally visits India for the first time after 9/11 during the bombing of Afghanistan, discovers her Indian family and a kind of belonging…..
…. and decides it’s time for world revolution.