The situation in which we find ourselves at the beginning of Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World is familiar, from life and in fiction: He had come back in April, the aftermath of the lawsuit and the court proceedings in two countries still fresh, the voices echoing behind him. This is a divorce novel, or rather an après-divorce novel. Jayojit, sometimes called Joy, accompanied by his seven-year-old son, Vikram, nicknamed Bonny, has come to Calcutta to visit his parents: his father, a retired admiral (“the Admiral”), and his mother, the hoveringly attentive Mrs. Chatterjee. He’s come from America, where he is a tenured professor of economics at a Midwestern college, having secured partial custody of his child after a protracted struggle in American and Indian courts. Joy and Bonny arrive in April, when the heat of summer sets in, and they will stay for the arrival of the monsoon. Then back to teaching and school and the United States. Two countries, several generations, families coming together for a while, others coming apart for good, explored in …