Few authors write about South Boston like Dennis Lehane. His novels are thrillers with murder and mayhem, but also snapshots in time of the culture of ‘Southie’, with its intense ethnic divisions, racism, and close-knit ties. Now gentrifying, the area...
‘Arranged marriage’ is likely one of the most examined social aspects of India. What of the men and women who make their own marital choices and go against the weight of societal expectation? Three such real-life couples are the focus...
In a dystopian future, most women are unable to bear children. The few women who are fertile are managed by the government, whose goal is to ensure the continuation of the species by making sure these women bear children to...
Nancy Hopkins’ tape measure is enshrined in the MIT Museum, and for good reason. For those who are perplexed by the inclusion of such a standard household product in the museum, and actually for anyone interested in the history of...
The blurb for Leopard at the Door reeks of The Far Pavilions. “A sweeping tale of self-discovery, betrayal and an impossible love.” “evocative portait of a woman — and a nation — on the cusp of profound change” Note how...
In the early 1600s, America was vast and Europeans had a tenuous foothold in Jamestown, Virginia. To encourage immigration, every Englishman who brought a servant or bonded labourer to America was ‘given’ 50 acres of land. One of the Englishmen...
When this collection came out in 2009, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was already well known from the excellent Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, but had not yet published the wonderful Americanah. This collection, This Thing Around Your Neck,...
Imagine a weatherproofed box of books outside a house where anyone is free to stop by and pick up a book, drop off a book, or just browse. It is such a charming idea, and seems so community-minded and friendly....
A debut author with a collection of short stories set in Bangalore; definitely worth investigating. Most of the stories in Shubha Sunder’s collection, Boomtown Girl , focuses, as befits the title, on girls growing up in Bangalore in the 1990s....
The early wave of South Asian immigrant writing focused on the immigrants themselves: their unfamiliarity with the new country, discrimination, yearning for a home that changed after their departure, and excitement about the opportunities now available to them. The next...
Novels about neurodivergent people are no longer unusual. After the well-deserved success of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog In the NightTime, there have been several novels with very memorably ‘different’ characters who have to adjust to an...
The title of Allegra Goodman’s novel, and its cover, point to the nature of its content: it is about a girl called Sam. The first sentence of the novel is almost unnecessary. There is a girl, and her name is...
If Indian villages were populated by American teenagers, The Bandit Queens would be a black-humor romp. The novel is inspired by the true story of Phoolan Devi, a poor woman at the bottom of the caste structure in Uttar Pradesh....
Three unrelated people live in a small town in Pennsylvania. Each one has lost, in some way, someone close to them. These losses have in common that they are recent, and have left the character devastated, but each one is...
Claire Keegan’s novella, Small Things Like These, was a little gem, and Foster is another one. A mere 76 pages, it is wonderfully complete: saying everything in just a few words, leaving enough unsaid for the reader to draw their...
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