A Free Man

[Introduces] us to the people who live on that side of the barrier of multidimensional poverty.

Vijay Prashad, Red Pepper

A Free Man is a beautiful work of journalism, sympathetic and graceful. The author follows, and progressively befriends, a homeless day laborer in Delhi. What starts as classic ethnography becomes a gripping story, and ends as a homage to a lost friend.

Esther Duflo, author of 'Poor Economics'

A Free Man is a brilliant capturing of the language and bloodstream of a city. Aman Sethi has made a book that's remarkable in its voice and evocation.

Michael Ondaatje

A Free Man is stunning. It reminds me of that Victorian masterpiece of investigative journalism, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and London Poor. Aman Sethi ‘gets’ modern India better than any other journalist I know. Not only is he a remarkable reporter and storyteller, but he possesses a novelist’s ear for language, sense of the absurd, and perfect pitch. I’m bowled over, totally.

Sylvia Nasar

A deeply moving, funny, and brilliantly written account from one of India’s most original new voices.

Katherine Boo, author of 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers'

Fascinating, funny and extraordinarily moving.

Lewis Jones, Spectator

Funny and disturbing.

Arundhati Roy

This is probably the most graphic and truthful account of the reality of India’s uneven economic boom over the past two decades.

Andrew Robinson, Independent

With A Free Man, Aman Sethi comes to the forefront of an extraordinary new generation of Indian non-fiction writers. His compassion and humor is matched by a fierce determination to tell the stories of ordinary Indians, too often forgotten in the scramble for the spoils of the economic boom.

Hari Kunzru