BIJOU ROY
Ronica Dhar
Bijou Roy's life in Washington, D.C. is not thrilling but it is steady. When she loses her father to a long illness, she travels to India to scatter his remains in the river that runs through his native city. With the weight of her grief still fresh, she leaves a career and relationship in limbo only to be thrust into unfamiliar territory.
Never having fully understood why her parents severed their ties to India, she is drawn to Naveen, the son of her father's closest comrade. Naveen holds over Bijou intimate details of their fathers' past and their political involvements. Quickly, she is embroiled in the mysteries of love, grief, and family histories, questioning what happens next when the customs of neither an original nor an adopted culture provide comfort.
In her quest for answers, Bijou sees how each generation must wrestle—often at great risk—with the one that came before, and, perhaps above all, comes to learn how to replace sorrow with hope.
St. Martin's Press, hardcover, 9780312551018
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A DIFFERENT SKY
Meira Chand
In a novel of breathtaking scope, Meira Chand tells the story of three families caught up in the tumultuous history of Singapore, as it journeys along the long, hard path to independence. From the opportunist Raj Sherma, an Indian immigrant made good; to the young Communist Greta, fighting the imperialists in the 1950s; and from the mixed loyalties of the Eurasian and Chinese communities to the sufferings of British prisoners of war, A Different Sky paints a vivid panorama of Singapore society through the personal struggles and victories of characters the reader will find it hard to forget.
Random House, hardcover, 9781846553431
Harvill Secker, paperback, 9781846553431
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ANITYA: HALFWAY TO NOWHERE
Mridula Garg
Translated from the Hindi by Seema Sengal
Mridula Garg's novel sensitively portrays the predicament of two generations during and immediately after the Independence Movement. Anitya moves beyond the theme of Independence, the trauma of Partition, and victimhood.
Focusing on everyday personal battles between principles and self-interest, it shows how high moral standards turn quite easily to betrayal in the face of personal gratification. Anitya is about the pain of ordinary Indians who failed to keep their tryst with destiny as they travelled from the crossroads to an unforeseen end.
Using flashbacks, the novel depicts the struggle of its characters as they try to adjust to the counterfeit democracy they find themselves in. The imagined conversations between the two central characters, Avijit and Anitya, reveal how, under the veil of respectable fronts, secrets and emotional failures corrode nearly everything.
Mridula Garg is one of the most widely read contemporary Hindi writers. She is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards, including the Vyas Samman for her novel Kathgulab in 2004; the Sahityakar Samman awarded by the Hindi Akademi; and M.P. Sahitya Parishad's awards for her novel Uske Hisse ki Dhoop and her play Jadoo ka Kaleen.
Oxford University Press, hardcover, 9780198065258
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THE WORD BOOK
Mieko Kanai
Translated from the Japanese by Paul McCarthy
Like the surfaces of a jagged crystal, each story in this collection shows an entirely different facet when viewed from a different angle. Playing games with the basic units of both life and fiction—the solid certainties of the self, the world around us, and the words we use to describe these things to one another—Mieko Kanai creates a reality where nothing is certain, and where a little boy going out to run errands for his mother might find that he's an adult, and his mother long dead, at the end of a single train ride. Using precise language to describe dreamlike plots owing as much to Kafka and Barthelme as to Kenzaburō Ōe and the long tradition of the Japanese folktale of the macabre, The Word Book is an unforgettable voyage to absurd, hilarious, and terrifying locales, and is the English-language debut for one of the greatest and most interesting Japanese writers working today. A Japan Times "Best Book of 2009" selection.
Dalkey Archive, paperback, 9781564785664
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OTHAPPU: THE SCENT OF THE OTHER SIDE
Sarah Joseph
Translated from the Malayalam by Valson Thampu
This transfiguring work opens with Sister Margalitha leaving the Convent in search of God. When she decides to live with Karikkan, a priest who has abandoned his vocation, she offends her family, society, the Church, and the law. The scandal rocks Thrissur, and the couple become social outcasts.
Othappu, the first Malayalam novel of its kind, is about a woman's yearning for a true understanding of spirituality and her own sexuality. The novel is a powerful indictment of the hypocrisy that plagues Christianity in many parts of the Subcontinent. Othappu unfolds at many levels to critique notions of class, caste, antiquity, and prestige that have, over time, eroded the power of the first Church.
The detailed Introduction by Jancy James provides rare insights into the work and skillfully sketches the social history of Kerala, the location of the novel. Two special inclusions—Paul Zacharia on the different meanings of 'othappu' and a dialogue between the author and Githa Hiranyan—lend fresh perspectives to the work.
Sarah Joseph has been instrumental in founding the later twentieth-century women's movement in Kerala (a state in SW India). An acclaimed short-story writer and novelist, her novels have won many awards.
Oxford University Press, hardcover, 9780198062165
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SEASONS OF FLIGHT
Manjushree Thapa
Prema, a young woman adrift in war-torn rural Nepal, with little to bind her to her family, village and country, wins a green card in a US government lottery and emigrates to Los Angeles. In this unfamiliar metropolis she struggles to invent a life she can call her own, even as love, and sexual awakening, transform her. There are no constants, or signposts, as she navigates the territory of her new world. But her commitment to Esther, the old woman she is employed to care for, her passionate relationship with Luis, her American lover, and her growing involvement with the endangered El Segundo Blue butterfly, give her a fragile sense of belonging.
Lyrical and haunting, and also deeply political, this new novel by the celebrated author of The Tutor of History and Forget Kathmandu confirms her reputation as one of the most original and distinctive literary voices from South Asia.
Penguin India, hardcover, 9780670084388
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THE QUEEN OF JHANSI
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Sagaree Sengupta and Mandira Sengupta
Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, a legendary Indian heroine, led her troops against the British in the uprising of 1857, which is now widely described as the first Indian War of Independence. The image of the young warrior queen who died on the battlefield but not in the minds of her people captured the imagination of novelist Mahasweta Devi, who undertook extensive research that encompassed family reminiscence, oral literature, local histories, and more traditional sources. From these she wove a very personal history of a heroine—an unusual woman, widowed at an early age, who grew from a free-spirited child into an independent young leader.
Devi's resulting work traces the history of the growing resistance to the British, while building a detailed picture of Lakshmibai as a complex, spirited, full-blooded woman who wears her long tresses unbound at the same time as she prefers a male attire on horseback; who is a cool-headed and far-sighted leader of men, full of warm concern for her soldiers; as well as a mother who worries about her infant son's well-being. Simultaneously a history, a biography, and an imaginative work of fiction, this book is a valuable contribution to the reclamation of history and historiography by feminist writers.
Seagull Books, hardcover, 9781906497538
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REVENGE
Taslima Nasrin
Translated by Honor Moore
In modern Bangladesh, Jhumur marries for love and imagines life with her husband, Haroon, will continue much as it did when they were dating on her university campus. But once she crosses the threshold of Haroon's family home, Jhumur finds she is expected to be the traditional Muslim wife: head covered, eyes averted, and unable to leave the house without an escort. When she becomes pregnant, Jhumur is shocked to discover that Haroon doesn't believe the baby is his. Overwhelmed by his mistrust, Jhumur plots her revenge in the arms of a handsome neighbor. Readers from every walk of life will be stunned by this tale of love, lust, and blood ties.
Internationally recognized, award-winning writer, Taslima Nasrin is known for her outspoken feminist philosophies and unflinching criticisms of Islam despite multiple fatwa calling for her death. Bangladeshi-born Nasrin now lives in NYC, where she was a writer in exile during the 2008-2009 school year at NYU. A doctor and activist, Nasrin's fiction and memoir have been translated into 20 languages.
The Feminist Press, paperback, 9781558616592 (August)
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