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Call Her Freedom

July 24, 2025

call her

A small village in the Himalayan foothills is the setting for Tara Dorabji’s debut novel, Call Her Freedom. Aisha’s mother is a midwife and teaches Aisha all about childbirth and herbal remedies when Aisha is not in school. An outstanding student it’s been her mother’s dream to see her go to university in the city.  But when her mother falls ill the only way to save their ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, family saga, historical, India, war

The Museum of Failures

September 26, 2023

museum of failures

It's been years since Remy Wadia has been back to Bombay, where he was born and raised. It was his father’s fervent wish that he go to America for university and then settle there, which Remy did. Now, he’s returning to adopt a baby as he and his wife have not been able to conceive. At the same time, he knows he needs to make the obligatory visit to his mother, despite the fact ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, India

The Covenant of Water

May 1, 2023

covenant

Abraham Verghese is back with a new novel 14 years after his critically acclaimed bestseller, Cutting for Stone. The Covenant of Water is a saga spanning 70 years about one family with an unusual history—in every generation there is a family member with an aversion to water who ends up drowning. Verghese uses this mysterious affliction as the thread woven through a sprawling ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 20th century, historical fiction, India, literary

The Book of Everlasting Things

January 27, 2023

everlasting

The Book of Everlasting Things is a multigenerational debut spanning the globe from India to Europe. Initially set in Lahore, India in the 1930s and 40s the novel encompasses 70 years in the lives of one Hindu boy and one Muslim girl. Two children, who despite different backgrounds, grow into love only to have it, and their lives, shattered when Great Britain partitions part of ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, debut, historical fiction, India, religion, world war II

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

January 13, 2023

vice

Anyone else remember the good old days of Sidney Sheldon, Penny Vincenzi, Nelson DeMille, any of those authors who wrote massive novels that were so stuffed with plot you couldn’t stop reading? Maybe it’s just my reading taste, but most of the longer novels I read now are literary fiction or historical. It was fun then to fall face first into Age of Vice, a sweeping novel of ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, India, social issues

Honor: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar

January 10, 2022

honor

When Smita arrives in Mumbai she thinks she’s there to help a good friend undergoing surgery. Otherwise, even as a global journalist, she has never returned to the country her family left when she was a teenager. Now, in Thrity Umrigar’s new novel, Honor, she’s forced to confront her past while coming face-to-face with another young woman horribly impacted by the same forces in ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, India, women

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