Sneha Mathan

In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with this eccentric, and her friendship with a peasant girl, Charu, give her the sense that she might be able to forge a new existence away from the devastation of her past. As Maya finds out, no place...

"Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena--a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man--Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one's own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful...

"November, 1921. Edward VIII, Prince of Wales and future ruler of India, is arriving in Bombay to begin a four-month tour. The Indian subcontinent is chafing under British rule, and Bombay solicitor Perveen Mistry isn't surprised when local unrest over the royal arrival spirals into riots. But she's horrified by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an eighteen-year-old female Parsi student, who falls from a second-floor gallery just as the prince's grand...

"India, 1922: Perveen Mistry is the only female lawyer in Bombay, a city where child mortality is high, birth control is unavailable and very few women have ever seen a doctor. Perveen is attending a lavish fundraiser for a new women's hospital specializing in maternal health issues when she witnesses an accident. The grandson of an influential Gujarati businessman catches fire--but a servant, his young ayah, Sunanda, rushes to save him, selflessly...

"Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize-winner Madhuri Vijay's The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present. In the wake of her mother's death, Kalyani, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that...

"In 2016, the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri published In Other Words, the story of her quest to learn Italian, which involved moving with her family to Italy to immerse herself fully in her adopted language. The book builds on that account through eight essays that reflect her early career as a translator. One essay uses her teaching of the Echo and Narcissus myth to reflect on the meaning of translation; another describes her decision to translate her own...

"India, 1947. In a village in Bengal live three sisters, daughters of a well-respected doctor. Priya: intelligent and idealistic, resolved to follow in her father's footsteps and become a doctor though society frowns on it. Deepa: the beauty, determined to make a marriage that will bring her family joy and status. Jamini: devout, sharp-eyed, and a talented quiltmaker, with deeper passions than she reveals. Theirs is a home of love and safety, a refuge...

"A powerful, urgent novel that wields issues of gender and class like a blade. . . . This intergenerational novel asks hard questions about who we are, who we can become, and what awaits on the other side of our becoming. Thrity Umrigar is known as a bold and generous writer, and The Secrets Between Us only further establishes her reputation." — Wiley Cash, author of The Last Ballad

Bhima, the unforgettable main

...

"When renowned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that's where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira's stories of her travels and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she's left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona,...

Presents three previously published works about a pet raven named Mortimer, who talks, eats everything in sight, and causes all sorts of trouble.