The Tiger’s Share is about much more than just sibling rivalry. Keshava Guha’s novel opens with the announcement of an unusual family conference. The protagonist, Tara, and her brother, Rohit, rush home to hear what their father will do with his retirement. Guha confidently sets family politics against the backdrop of burgeoning nationalism in Delhi during the ‘season of smogs and mellow murderousness’. Through Tara’s narration, we learn about patriarchal attitudes towards inheritance and success in the capital; she also delivers cutting analysis and witty rebuttals of such views.

The Tiger’s Share follows the fallout of this family conference, and the power struggle between Tara and Rohit. Tara is a driven lawyer; her brother has spent his time studying in the West and has little to show for it. She is contacted by an old friend, Lila, a motivated businesswoman whose brother has claimed all the family assets since their father’s death. The two women combine to combat their problematic brothers and fight the corner of the underappreciated, successful woman of Delhi. But it is Tara’s relationship with her father, and not her brother or her friend, that makes Guha’s novel such a riveting read.

Guha occasionally likes to tell rather than show, and at times Tara seems like a thinly drawn character. But the settings are the real highlights of this novel. A vast landfill site outside Delhi, the ‘trendy’ Westernised quarter and the lavish Sunder Nagar area where Tara ‘sat beneath an amaltas