Changes

|title=The Illicit Happiness of Other People

|sort=Illicit Happiness of Other People

|publisher=John Murray

|date=August 2012

|summary=This look at the fallout from a young man's suicide is literary, and not what one might assume to expect from Indian novels. While not entirely successful it could still be considered worth a look.

}}

Meet what the first chapter calls ''the underdog family''. Tamil immigrants to Madras, they are below the breadline due to Ousep's constant drinking, and by him being a failed writer and mediocre journalist. His wife Mariamma has, shall we say, problems, their younger son is fixated on the beautiful girl next door. But their other son Unni is a ''cartoonist hottie'' - a handsome prodigy of the comic strip world - or he was until he took a nosedive off their roof three years ago, aged 17. Ousep is still tracking through his son's friends and output, trying to seek the cause of this suicide, and what we have here is the journey of the family as he struggles towards the truth.