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Tag Archives: India

Book of Everlasting Things by Aanchal Malhotra 

27 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction, Historical Fiction

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Hindus, historical fiction, India, interfaith marriage, man-woman relationships, Muslims, Pakistan, Partition 1947, romance

April 2023 “Novels and Night” book club choice at the Weston Public Library

“Mesmerizing…At the heart of Malhotra’s sweeping debut novel is an indelible love story…A transcendent study of the blurring of personal and political, as ordinary people deal with catastrophic historical events.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“At once sweeping and intimate. With gorgeous prose and careful research, Malhotra brings to life a world rich with Indian perfumery, Urdu calligraphy, and a romance that defies time and space. A stunning book that reminds you of what it is to fall in love.”―Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of Four Treasures of the Sky

“A long and luxurious tale of love, loss, memory, and place, told against a backdrop of tumultuous historical events…It will be difficult indeed to forget this exquisite story.”―Library Journal (starred review)

“A majestic, evocative exploration of the persistence of memory and the human connections that transcend even death.”―Booklist (starred review)

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Honor by Thrity Umrigar

29 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in 20th century, Fiction

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East Indian American women., honor, India, interfaith marriage, religious aspects, social conditions, women, women journalists

I love this writer’s books about India in all its complexity.  My mother and I must have argued over the meaning of the ending in the The Space Between Us for months. In Honor the lives of two very different women come together after an unspeakable act of violence. I would add this warning:  the subject matter is not for sensitive readers.

In the way A Thousand Splendid Suns told of Afghanistan’s women, Thrity Umrigar tells a story of India with the intimacy of one who knows the many facets of a land both modern and ancient, awash in contradictions, permeated by a smoldering mix of ageless traditions and new ideas, beauty and brutality, hope and despair, certainty and mystery. A place where love can sometimes involve the peril of defying convention . . . and ultimately risking everything for what matters most.–Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

With insight and compassion, Thrity Umrigar writes masterfully about the complexities of hatred and love, estrangement and belonging, oppression and privilege, about holding on and letting go. A powerful, important, unforgettable book.–Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild

Honor is a novel of profound depths–cultural, personal, romantic, spiritual. It’s also a story of tremendous grace, both in the understanding it shows its characters and in the ways they navigate a brutal but stunning life.–Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers

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A Burning by Megha Majumdar

27 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in 20th century, Fiction, suspense, thriller

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India, Muslim women, railroad accidents, social media, suspense, terrorism, thriller

A very quick read at breakneck speed!  How quickly a Facebook message entangles 3 unforgettable characters in contemporary India whose lives will be forever changed.  You will want to follow this brand new writer…..

“Riveting…This is a novel of our pandemic times, an exploration of precarity in all its forms…Majumdar excels at depicting the workings of power on the powerless… Fate has rarely been so many-faced, so muscular, so mercurial, or so mesmerizing as it is in A Burning.”—The New York Times Book Review [cover]

“A Burning by Megha Majumdar is quietly beautiful and devastating. Its tone and pacing are measured perfectly. It is as funny as it is sad. This book won’t let you go, and you won’t want it to end.”—Tommy Orange

“A BURNING is an excellently crafted, utterly thrilling novel full of characters that I won’t soon forget.  Megha Majumdar writes about the ripple effects of our choices, the interconnectedness of our humanity, with striking beauty and clarity. A stunning debut.”—Yaa Gyasi

“The must-read novel of the summer… This all-consuming story rages along, bright and scalding… Majumdar demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture the vast scope of a tumultuous society by attending to the hopes and fears of people living on the margins. The effect is transporting, often thrilling, finally harrowing… Majumdar’s outrage is matched only by her sympathy for these ordinary people… [A Burning] is a damning critique of a culture that generates constant upheaval but no systemic change.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

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A Necessary Evil (book 2) by Abir Mukherjee

30 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in detective, Fiction, mystery

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assassination, British occupation 1765-1947, detective, history, India, investigation, Kolkata, mystery, princes

I just discovered this detective murder mystery series.  Once I finished the first book, A Rising Man, I had to rush to read this second one immediately and am anxiously waiting my turn on the wait list for the third, Smoke and Ashes.  That’s because Captain Sam Wyndam, former Scotland Yard detective, and Indian born, Sergeant Banerjee are quite the pair and it all takes place in post WW I India where there are still elephants, palaces, jewels, opium, temples, maharajas, harems, etc. It is a delectable read!

“Brilliant. Wyndam is an intriguing protagonist, offering crisp narration that’s sometimes slightly arrogant, sometimes amusingly self-effacing. Add in clever dialogue that’s laden with double entendre, and what more can a hardcore whodunit fan ask for?”- Bookpage (Top 10 Mystery of the Year)

“Mukherjee is adept at multifaceted, slow-burn plot manipulations. Packed with incident and intrigue, yet never in a way that sacrifices historical verisimilitude or character development for the sake of a thrill. At its heart, the novel and its prequel, A Rising Man, take the buddy-cop formula and turn it on its head in endless rotations. From the cars to the flowers to the moth-eaten flags, Wyndham sees empire for the lie that it is. This makes him an intriguing embodiment of the intricacies and hypocrisies of the period―especially in Mukherjee’s hands.”

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The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction

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India, Jammu and Kashmir, journey, mother's death, mothers and daughters, villages Himalaya Mountains region, young women

This debut novel kept me turning the pages sensing something ominous was going to happen but wondering just how this privileged, naïve girl from Bangalore on an unplanned trip to locate a long ago visitor to her family home would manage or fail traveling in the now volatile, dangerous mountains of Kashmir.  Frought with tension….well worth it.  Can’t wait for her next book!

“Vijay intertwines her story’s threads with dazzling skill. Dense, layered, impossible to pin—or put—down, her first novel is an engrossing tale of love and grief, politics and morality. Combining up-close character studies with finely plotted drama, this is a triumphant, transporting debut.”—BOOKLIST (STARRED REVIEW)

 “Dazzling… Vijay’s prose is exquisite—florid and descriptive at times, spare and pared back at others. The story keeps twisting unexpectedly until the end, keeping emotions fraught, questions percolating. It’s a scintillating novel from a truly gifted writer.”—BOOKPAGE (STARRED REVIEW)

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The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

30 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction

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India, Mumbai, servant and master, social classes, social life and customs, upper class women, women household employees

Just released – June 2018!  I can’t wait to tell my mother.  She and I had debated for hours about the meaning of the ending of Umrigar’s first book –  The Space Between Us  –  the story of the deep friendship between two women of very different stations in India.  Written as beautifully as her first book, this new friendship and journey of two women both born without privilege pushes the very boundaries on earth.  No need to read in order – both are powerhouse novels!

“The women at the heart of this novel inhabit the harsh world of the urban Indian poor, and struggle separately and together for dignity and survival. Thrity Umrigar has written a moving human tale that vividly brings to life both the women and the city of Mumbai.”  (Salman Rushdie)

“[The Secrets Between Us] provides an almost “Siddhartha”-esque experience of sharing a character’s spiritual journey, as the plot takes Bhima and Parvati to places where they must question their preconceptions, search their souls and ultimately change.” (Newsday)

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The Strangler Vine (a Blake and Avery novel) by M.J. Carter

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction, Historical Fiction, mystery

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British occupation 1765-1947, cults, detectives, East India Company, historical fiction, India, missing persons, mystery stories

“From the thrilling prolog to the satisfying conclusion, former journalist and nonfiction author Carter’s first foray into fiction hooks the reader into a ripping adventure ride, full of danger, conspiracy, and trickery. Young William Avery, a soldier in the service of the British East India Company in 1837 India, receives an unexpected assignment. He is to accompany Jeremiah Blake, a secret political agent with an astonishing talent for languages and Sherlock Holmesian disguises, on a mission to find the scandalous British writer Xavier Mountstuart, who is missing. Each twist and turn of the duo’s journey draws them deeper into the mystery of the sinister Thuggee cult and closer to uncovering the shocking truth at the heart of the puzzle of Mountstuart’s disappearance. VERDICT Carter’s clever historical thriller is a winner.–Barbara Clark-Greene (Reviewed November 15, 2014) (Library Journal, vol 139, issue 19, p76)

“Totally engrossing — the sort of story that makes you forget that there are other books stacked next to your bed, waiting to be read.”–Michael Lewis, The New York Times Book Review

“[A] yarn reminiscent of adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”—The New York Post

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Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Fiction, Historical Fiction

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British customs, India, married women

9781582430157_p0_v1_s114x166

Heat and Dust was recently mentioned in a Boston Globe interview with Ha Jin, author of Waiting, which won the National Book Award in 1999 and his most recent novel, A Map of Betrayal.  Jin who teaches a course at Brandeis entitled “The Literature of the Migrant” describes Heat and Dust as “an exquisite novel, technically perfect.”  That was a challenge!  In less than two hundred pages, Jhabvala has created a penetrating and compassionate love story set in India in the 1920’s that leaves the reader wondering about the outcome.

“A superb book. A complex story line, handled with dazzling assurance … moving and profound. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has not only written a love story, she has also exposed the soul and nerve ends of a fascinating and compelling country. This is a book of cool, controlled brilliance. It is a jewel to be treasured” — The Times

“A writer of genius … a writer of world class — a master storyteller’ — Sunday Times

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The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by Weston Public Library Staff in Historical Fiction

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brothers, family secrets, India, Naxalite movement, Rhode Island

9780385351744_p0_v2_s114x166

Jhumpa Lahiri’s lastest book, The Lowland, tells the story of two brothers from Calcutta and how the decisions that they make and the secrets that they keep will affect the next three generations of their families in India and America.  I continue to be fascinated with her interpretation of two divergent societies, Indian and American, and how the cultural differences and similarities play out in the lives of her characters.

“Graceful and steady . . . devastatingly precise . . . Lahiri [writes with] ruthless clarity . . . The Lowland continues Lahiri’s career-long study of the tendrils that grow up in canyons [between characters], that intertwine and bind people to one another through responsibility and dependency, love and guilt. [Lahiri is] anchored firmly as a great American writer.” —Jennifer Day, Chicago Tribune

“Lahiri’s finest work so far, at once unsettling and generous, bow-string taut . . . shattering and satisfying in equal measure. I expect The Lowland will prove her most controversial book to date, for its plot grows out of [a] Maoist-inspired uprising in the late 1960s. Though Lahiri has put [the] politics in, she also wants us to concentrate on the spectators instead of the struggle around the gun. This book is a determinedly apolitical writer’s attempt to deal with an explosive subject. And though she deals more fully here than ever before with a specifically Indian subject, though the book both begins and ends in Calcutta and what happens there will forever mark its characters’ lives, The Lowland is written in an American vein; she seamlessly inserts new people—new manners, mores, material—into a traditional American form. What counts in The Lowland isn’t the fate of society but the individual life and the chance or pursuit of individual happiness; Turgenev among others would recognize the problem she defines. The prose . . . provides something like a continuous present, pointillist and monumental at once, as though carved . . . Uncompromising and yet clear—carries a note of accessible distinction.” —Michael Gorra, The New York Review of Books

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