This novel takes place in Rawalpindi, in the Indian state of the Punjab, in 1937 amid the mourning and mounting tension that precedes partition. Satya (whose name means Truth) has failed to give her well-born husband, Sardarji, a child. Sardarji, without hesitation or consultation, has found himself a youthful second wife, Roop (meaning body or form), a village girl whose mother died in childbirth, and whose father is deep in debt to him. Satya and Roop's enforced female partnership - by turns warring, sisterly, tender, rivalrous - forms a bitter axis around which the tragedy of this novel unfolds. While Roop struggles to keep her children from the noble but imperious Satya, the more epic struggle of religious war is gathering pace around them.
Flecked with Indian poetry and colour, rich in social and religious detail, this stunning novel is at once poetic and political, feminist and earthy. Its exuberant mix of Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy reveals a new and unrivalled voice in this epic novel of the partitioning of India.
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the Caribbean and Canada Region.
