'A great deal of heart' Graeme Simsion 'Praised for its wit' BBC Radio 4 Front Row 'When I'm an old man, I want to be Hendrik Groen' John Boyne 'I laughed until I cried' David Suchet 'Thoughtful, anxious and gruff... Laced with humour' Mail on Sunday 'Amusing [and] wickedly accurate' Sunday Express

A story with a great deal of heart, it pulled me in with its self-deprecating humour, finely drawn characters and important themes. Anyone who hopes to grow old with dignity will have much to reflect on

Thoughtful, anxious and gruff... Laced with humour

Full of off-beat charm and quirky characters

A joy to read, as much concerned with friendship and dignity as it is with the debilitating effects of aging ... An entertaining and uplifting story of a man in the winter of his days, stoic in the face of bureaucratic nonsense and an unabashed need to wear a nappy. Imagined or not, this is the diary of someone who wants nothing more than to be allowed see out his days with dignity and respect. It's not too much to ask, really, is it?

Amusing [and] wickedly accurate ... I was constantly put in mind of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, another comi-tragedy concerning the tyranny of institutions of the unwanted. Enjoy Groen's light touch but do not be fooled by it. We live in an ageing society. The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen is a handbook of resistance for our time. ***** FIVE STARS

Hendrik Groen is king

Highly entertaining ... a delightful and touching saga of one man's way of coping with old age ... we may assume that Hendrik Groen is a character of fiction. But it is a fiction so closely based on the observation of real life that it is utterly convincing

Hendrik pens an exposé of his care home, sets up the Old-But-Not-Dead club and relishes the arrival of a new female resident. This geriatric Adrian Mole made me laugh and think. Terrific

Mukherjee… homes in on the restless, the disinherited, the socially trapped… Mercilessly observant, he does not spare the reader but leavens scenes of savagery, squalor and despair with moments of rainbow vividness, all the more striking for the muddy, cacophonous backdrop from which they are brought forth… In a significant and porous work, Mukherjee gives congruence and visibility to these fractured, hidden lives

He does what good novelists should, which is to hold up a mirror to society and remind people that what passes for normal is often barbaric. His quiet observation is effective – and damning

Set in contemporary India, technically daring, deeply compassionate, it’s a powerful, pertinent novel about migration and social injustice

Each story is intimate and universal, concrete and elusive… A State of Freedom is ambitious, and it succeeds on all levels

Narrated with the precise realism that we have come to expect of Neel Mukherjee’s novels… A State of Freedom resonates with intricate and disturbing echoes… Mukherjee has created an India that is always graspable and always elusive

In Mukherjee’s hands familiar fare is elevated by his empathy for the poor and the journalistic efforts he undertakes to understand them… his best work yet… This bleak and entirely justified vision of modern India is what binds together Mukherjee’s stories and indeed his oeuvre

A compelling read set in contemporary India that explores the attempts of five characters, each in different circumstances, to exchange the life they are leading for something better

A brilliant novel, deeply compassionate and painterly, reminding me of Howard Hodgkin’s paintings. Mukherjee brings to life the colours and sounds of a place where modern life is constantly crashing against tradition

Bleak and beautifully written

Mukherjee’s characters are so well drawn and their plights so affecting that we stop quibbling over how to categorise the book and simply lose ourselves in masterful storytelling… Random bouts of cruelty… unfold in electrifying prose

Very powerful, very well written

A thing of wonder… does what a great novel should do… one of the most wonderful novels I’ve read for ages and ages… such wonderful high calibre writing’

Brilliant… I couldn’t put it down…everything about it rang true… so gripping, so thrilling

A splendidly rich and affirmative novel

An especially searing account of state oppression and Communist terror… everything is held together by Mukherjee’s wonderfully inventive prose style

An exceptional portrait of modern India – and one of the best novels this year

Mukherjee confronts us with the deranged performances of both master and slave… A State of Freedom’s artfully handled piecing together of story fragments is held in tension by a counterforce of textual disintegration

This novel paints a vivid picture of modern India, its beauty and its benightedness, examining the relationship between identity and migration. Mukherjee is pitch-perfect in his descriptions of Indian life and unsparing in chronicling the poverty, deprivation and superstition that blights the nation. The book’s themes are important and the writing powerful, in places shocking

Harsh and vibrant… Mukherjee’s deep knowledge of India and the West, allied to his never-failing curiosity about the ties that both bind us and separate us, makes him an outstanding chronicler of Bengali life, seen from within and without… In an age when so many fiction writers flimflam around in a cloud of unknowing, Mukherjee has an eagle’s eye for the truth

It’s a brave and frequently devastating novel whose themes of displacement and dehumanisation are all too timely

The last book that made my heart race? That’d be Neel Mukherjee’s A State of Freedom: completely propulsive and horrifying and astonishing

A powerful novel about alienation and the illusion of freedom.

Stories of displacement, alienation and inequality add up to dynamic, life-affirming symphony – albeit one punctuated with discordant and unsettling notes.

Mukherjee confronts head-on the appalling deprivation and the caste stigma that bedevil so many lives, and the result is as powerful as it is disturbing.

Mesmerising complexity and the sharpness mixed with compassion and empathy. All the stories are beautifully written… Long after I finished it I realized the characters were still with me, vivid, compelling, haunting