These foolish things - Deborah Moggach

A thoroughly enjoyable black comedy from the author of Tulip Fever .

Dr. Ravi Kapoor has reached the end of his tether. He is over-worked and exhausted; his South London hospital is out of funds; and reporters are hounding him about the death of a pensioner, who, for three days lay on a trolley untended, the blood stiffening on her clothes. Even home life has become impossible as his father-in-law, a disgusting and difficult old man, has been kicked out of his nursing home and has moved into Ravi’s spare bedroom. But then that “tip top man,” his cousin, Sonny, has a brainwave, his “great eureka.”

Dunroamin is a converted guesthouse in Bangalore, where Sonny starts a home for old people. Travel and set-up are inexpensive, staff willing and plentiful -- and the British pensioners can enjoy the hot weather and take mango-juice with their gin.

Skillfully inter-weaving the stories of the inhabitants of Dunroamin, their characters and their families, Deborah Moggach has created a world in which hilarity is matched with the poignancy of getting old, and comedy with the darker issues of care in the community.