Kamala Markandaya

Kamala Markandaya is the pen name of Kamala Purnaiya, a British Indian novelist and journalist who was born in 1924 and died in 2004. She wrote under this name, and her titles include Nectar in a Sieve, Possession, Two Virgins, The Nowhere Man, A Silence of Desire, Golden Honeycomb and The Coffer Dams. A Handful of Rice follows a young peasant's son into the scarce work and hunger of industrial India's cities.