A kaleidoscopic portrait of India
“WRITERS AND POLITICIANS ARE NATURAL rivals,” Salman Rushdie wrote in his 1982 essay “Imaginary Homelands.” “Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel is one way of denying the official, politicians’ version of truth.”
In her captivating debut novel Megha Majumdar presents a powerful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated in contemporary India. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, artists and journalists have faced pressure to toe the Hindu nationalist party line. Indian universities have purged “antinationals” from campuses. In a 2015 criminal trial for contempt of court, Booker Prize–winning author Arundhati Roy was accused by a judge of unfairly criticizing “a most tolerant
