Description
Spanning three generations in present-day Karnataka, this novel traces the shifting bonds of an extended family as love, duty, and resentment collide across time. At its center is Kalyani, whose long years of silence with her husband, Shripati, reveal how grief and patriarchal power can become a form of punishment—quiet, enduring, and deeply consequential. As the family’s relationships are tested and reinterpreted, the story examines what it costs to remain “proper” in a tradition-bound world, and what it takes to reclaim voice, agency, and self-identity. With Shashi Deshpande’s signature focus on the inner lives of Indian middle-class women and the tensions between tradition and modernity, the novel offers a compassionate, incisive look at gendered suffering and the complex, often painful, work of healing.
Available Editions
paperback
Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Published Jan 1, 1999
269 pages
ISBN: 9781558612143
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Details
First Published
1996
Language
eng
Content Warnings
No content warnings identified.