What happens when someone tries to trade the life they have been given for a better one? Can we change the possibilities that await us at birth? The major, defining events of our century?displacement and migration?are revealed in A State of Freedom, but not in the way you might expect. Five characters?a domestic cook in Mumbai, a vagabond and his dancing bear, a teenager fleeing danger in her home village for a new life in the city?learn what it means to be dislocated and what it means to want more. This novel of numerous narratives?formally adventurous, aggressive, but full of pity?moves between this world's reality and its shadow to give a sad and eerie analysis of the insatiable human desire to pursue happiness.