The Rice Mother

'She is the keeper of dreams. Look carefully and you will see, she sits on her wooden throne holding all our hopes and dreams in her strong hands, big and small, yours and mine. The years will not diminish her.'

Rich in myth and magic, 'The Rice Mother' chronicles the life of one remarkable woman in twentieth century Malaysia. Told through the lyrical voices of Lakshmi and her family, it is a story of laughter and loss, love and betrayal, exploitation and degradation; one where religion and superstition walk hand in hand, and where ghosts and gods are equally commonplace.

At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi leaves her native Ceylon and travels to far off Malaya to marry a man many years her senior. Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch despite her tender years. By her willpower she survives the oriental nightmare of the Japanese invasion - but her family bears deep scars on its back and in turn inflicts those wounds on the next generation.

Not until Lakshmi's great granddaughter, Nisha, pieces together the mosaic that is her family history, does the legacy of the Rice Mother bear fruit.