Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

The curtain rises on an elderly Indian couple, swinging gently on their verandah as pigeons coo on the balcony above: the incarnation, you might imagine, of domestic harmony. But just wait till you meet their daughter Uma, a virtual prisoner in her own home since childhood - not to mention their son Arun, who, sent to study on the other side of the world, has become embroiled in a captivity of his own, amid the detritus of American family life. A cleverly-composed novel of understated wit and unmitigated bleakness, it's hard to see what could have pipped Fasting, Feasting at the 1999 Booker post: except, of course, J.M. Coetzee's unparalleled Disgrace. This is just as angry a book and, despite its occasional blaze of despairing hilarity, an even blacker one.