Tag Archive for: India

The Tiger’s Share | Keshava Guha

 

Set against a backdrop of ecological collapse and political unrest, The Tiger’s Share is both a family and a state-of-the-nation novel unlike anything else in contemporary Indian fiction.

Tara, a successful Dehli lawyer, is everything her younger brother isn’t: dedicated, independent, thriving. When their beloved father retires, he summons them to a meeting. But what he has to say threatens to tear the family apart.

Tara’s friend Lila has it all: a great job, a lovely home, a beautiful family. But when Lila’s father dies unexpectedly, her brother wastes no time in claiming what he thinks is his.

Together, Tara and Lila are forced to confront the challenge that their ambition poses to patriarchal Delhi society.

‘A stylish and engaging tragi-comedy of manners . . . Keshava Guha is an astute and insightful observer of contemporary India’ Amitav Ghosh.

The Hungry Tide | Amitav Ghosh

 

Off the easternmost corner of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans, where settlers live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers. Piya Roy, a young American marine biologist of Indian descent, arrives in this lush, treacherous landscape in search of a rare species of river dolphin and enlists the aid of a local fisherman and a translator. Together the three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, drawn unawares into the powerful political undercurrents of this isolated corner of the world that exact a personal toll as fierce as the tides.

Tiger Girl | Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit’s Tiger Girl marks a shift from the Amazonian rainforests of her previous work to explore her grandmother’s Indian heritage and the fauna and flora of subcontinental jungles. Tiger Girl is the grandmother, with her tales of wild tigers, but she’s also the endangered predators Petit encountered in Central India. In exuberant and tender ecopoems, the saving grace of love in an otherwise bleak childhood is celebrated through spellbinding visions of nature, alongside haunting images of poaching and species extinction.

Tiger Girl is Pascale Petit’s eighth collection won the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020.

 

Purchase Tiger Girl from Bookshop.org

 

The Tusk that did the Damage | Tania James

‘There he was, his trunk wrapped in hers. Whatever hurt or sorrow befell him was not really happening to him. He was on the other bank with his mother. He was not here.’

When a young elephant is brutally orphaned by poachers, he begins terrorising the countryside, earning his malevolent name, the Gravedigger, from the humans he kills and then tenderly buries with leaves. Manu, the studious son of a rice farmer, loses his cousin to the Gravedigger and is drawn into the alluring world of ivory hunting.

Emma is working on a documentary set in a Kerala wildlife park with her best friend. Her work leads her to witness the porous boundary between conservation and corruption, until eventually she finds herself caught up in her own betrayal.

‘One of the most unusual and affecting books… a compulsively readable, devastating novel.’ Jonathan Safran Foer

 

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