The Complex is a brilliant, sweeping tour de force moving between the US and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family.
In This Spotlight
Support Independent Bookstores.
You can find Spotlights at LitStack on bookshop.org
About The Complex
In a sprawling complex in Delhi, the sons and daughters of SP Chopra, one of India’s political architects, live together vying for influence in a family shaped by the great man’s legacy. By the late 1970s, his descendants are scrambling to define their own futures in a still-young nation on the brink of transformation.
Sachin Chopra leaves for America, with his bride Gita following not long after, as the newlyweds are eager to forge their own lives beyond the pressures of the family compound. Yet Delhi remains an inescapable force, one that keeps pulling them back, even as Gita is menaced by Sachin’s predatory uncle, Laxman. A man of restless ambition, Laxman ascends through the ranks of a rising Hindu nationalist movement, caught between his political aspirations and his personal transgressions. Meanwhile, Vibha, his sister, tries to keep the peace and the reputation of the family intact even as she wrestles with her own exile.
As India erupts in violence and long-buried secrets come to light, the embattled Chopras must reckon with the cost of power, the weight of tradition, and the shifting nature of love and allegiance. Equal parts brilliant family saga and piercing political drama, A virtuosic novel of revenge and redemption, ambition and undoing, loyalty and love, by one of the most lauded voices in contemporary fiction.
Praise for The Complex
“An extraordinary gift to its lucky readers: an enormously full and brilliantly structured novel whose characters come to feel as familiar—and as bottomlessly mysterious—as one’s own family. I was spellbound by the ramifying dramas of the Chopras, whose strong roots intertwine below their Delhi complex during decades of sweeping global and national change. I am awestruck by what Karan Mahajan has accomplished…, and I never wanted this book to end.”—Karen Russell, author of National Book Award finalist The Antidote
“A delicious page-turner about familial jealousy and revenge that, in the Dostoyevskian tradition, doubles as a masterful investigation of the slipperiness of power in a changing and modernizing world. Mahajan’s most exciting, virtuosic novel yet.”—Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao
“In the tradition of Tolstoy, Karan Mahajan has written a family saga and a historical epic that describes humanity with absolute fidelity—no kinder or crueler, wiser or duller, grander or punier than it really is. In The Complex, not only is the personal political, but the political is a duck blind for the personal, demonstrating how family secrets and failed businesses create demagogues, martyrs, and murderers. This is a farsighted and serious novel, and a monument to radicalized times.”—Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection, longlisted for the National Book Award
“Epic in scope, wonderous in its summoning of distinct characters, vital in its weaving of family and politics. This is a miraculous novel.”—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of National Book Award finalist Chain-Gang All-Stars
“This novel’s rare achievement lies in its masterful portrayal of the intimate relationship between personal lives and political realities. Through the story of a family, it captures the larger movements shaping the nation, revealing how political and social transformations seep into everyday life and quietly shape human choices. . . . The strength, intensity, and momentum of his narrative are such that nothing needs to be pointed out deliberately; everything unfolds with organic necessity…danger lurking beneath the story, lending…a palpable, high-stakes intensity that holds the reader in its grip.”—Vivek Shanbhag, author of Ghachar Ghochar
“To watch the wily Chopras jostle for dominion—not just over the crumbling walls of their shared home, but over the very historical and moral record of their age—is pure pleasure. Mahajan is, as always, a political anatomist blessed with a comedian’s eye for the absurd, and [this novel] is a singular portrait of a family as riven and fractious—and eternally surprising—as the country that produced it.”—Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field
“Riveting and unputdownable—Shakespearean storytelling. Karan Mahajan’s best work yet.”—Sonia Falerio, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing
About Karan Mahajan, Author of The Complex
Karan Mahajan is the author of The Association of Small Bombs, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. His debut novel Family Planning was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize.
He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and other venues. He is an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University.
You can connect with Karan Mahajan on his website, and on LinkedIn.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Viking | Penguin Random House
ISBN Hardcover 9780593832905
Pub Date Mar 10, 2026
A Book by Karan Mahajan and Other LitStack Spots
Here are a few other LitStack Spots, including The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, and The Fraud by Zadie Smith 1
Other LitStack Resources
LitStack Spotlights
Be sure and check out LitStack Spotlights that shine a light on books we think you should read. We feature two books each week in our LitStack Spotlight, and offer suggestions for similar titles in our LitStack Spots.
LitStack Reviews
Also look at our LitStack Reviews, including reviews by Lewis Buzbee, Lauren Alwan, Allie Coker, Rylie Fong, and Sharon Browning.
LitStack Recs
Each week we offer a LitStack Rec, sometimes two books at once, sometimes more. Be sure and look at our LitStack Recs where you’ll find what you should read next.
You can find and buy the books we recommend at the LitStack Bookshop on our list of LitStack Recs.
As a Bookshop, Malaprop’s, BAM, Barnes & Noble, Audiobooks.com, Amazon, and Envato affiliate, LitStack may earn a commission at no cost to you when you purchase products through our affiliate links.
