“It's time to stop fighting, and go home.”
Those were the words, written by a minor but well-reputed Bengali poet, that finally persuaded Aruna to walk out of her East London flat and keep on walking. Leaving behind her marriage to her devoted husband of less than a year, Aruna heads to the airport and boards a plane bound for Singapore, and her old life.

When Aruna first came to London, she was fleeing many things: her recently deceased father, the only family she'd ever had; the complicated psychological diagnosis she preferred to forget; her best friend and lover, Jazz, and the life they'd tried, and failed, to create together. Back in Singapore, she finds Jazz - troubled by the pleas of the dying father he refuses to forgive – who has never stopped waiting for her return. Aruna is about to discover that running away is easy; it is coming home - making peace with Jazz, herself and those they have loved - that is hard.

‘Half Life" is Roopa Farooki’s fourth novel. Set in London, Singapore and Malaysia, it is an extraordinary, brutal yet also lyrical novel of love and conflict, friendship and sacrifice, and the ultimate search for where we belong.