The characters in Oindrila Mukherjee’s debut novel, The Dream Builders, all take a turn in telling their points of view, with a chapter apiece, an allocation that extends to the fictional high-tech city in which the story takes place, Hrishipur, a character in its own right. Mukherjee’s structure allows all socioeconomic sectors to have a say in the narrative.

It’s 2018 and a young professor named Maneka returns to India—and Hrishipur—to visit her father after her mother passes away. Although she grew up in Calcutta, her parents later moved to Hrishipur for her mother’s teaching job. But the move to this new city with its skyscrapers and luxury shopping malls is not what Maneka’s parents imagined. The condominium they invested in goes bust before it’s constructed and Maneka’s mother dies from a heart attack, the two not unrelated.
A former classmate named Ramona has also moved to Hrishipur and as soon as Maneka lands in India to spend the summer with her father, she receives a party invitation from Ramona. The two were never close in school, Ramona part of a popular clique that called themselves “the beautiful girls”, while Maneka concentrated on her studies. When this invitation arrives, Maneka finally feels accepted, despite success in her career as a professor at an American university. At the party, Ramona and her husband Salil are going to make a big announcement. Maneka assumes the couple is expecting their first child and is surprised when Salil reveals the true reason he and Ramona have gathered their friends together that evening.
We have bought a flat in Trump Towers. Yes, we know that all the flats have been sold. But I managed to find a broker who knew an investor who wanted to sell his. That fool got scared at looking at all the unfinished projects and thought he would bail while he could. I had no hesitation … It was a big investment but I have little doubt that this particular property will not be stuck. Construction has already progressed quite rapidly in the last year as we have all noticed, and we have been assured that it will continue to proceed at breakneck speed. The Americans don’t mess around when it comes to deals.
Maneka is horrified and cannot bear to listen to these plans about moving into a building with seven towers, each named after one of the major rivers in the world: Ramona and Salil’s unit will be in the Danube tower. The Trump Towers themselves almost become a character in the story, albeit one without a chapter of its own. Eric and Lara Trump make an (unnamed) cameo to celebrate the family’s new building. Lara is the only person at the reception dressed in Indian attire.
Subsequent chapters are told from the standpoints of Ramona, her manicurist, Salil’s driver, Maneka’s father, his housekeeper Chaya, and an electrician Chaya knows named Gopal, among a few others. While interacting, these characters dream of a better life, whether it’s Ramona and Salil’s dream condo in the Trump Towers, or Maneka’s wish to find meaning in India in absence of her mother. Or Pinky, the manicurist, who cannot get by on tips alone and dreams of finding more ways to support her family. These and the other characters all play a role in this new city of Hrishipur, one that is built on their dreams. But as the novel plays over its more than 300 pages, it becomes apparent that many of these dreams will never materialize.
As the story ends, which appears on the very first page of the novel, Maneka reflects on her summer in India while her flight takes off for the US:
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