'Honor' is a searing meditation on the meaning of dignity in a dehumanizing world
Thrity Umrigar's important new novel Honor isn't an easy read.
From depictions of casual misogyny to distressing scenes of public shaming, mistreatment and torture, the novel shows the terrifying social forces that strip vulnerable people of dignity and render them animal-like. It's a searing meditation on the meaning of dignity in a dehumanizing world.
Honor is set in today's India. This isn't the globalized India of news or the India of IT excellence and an ambitious space mission. It's the unseemly side of the country, blighted by cultural conservatism, poverty, sectarian violence, caste hierarchies and misogyny.
Umrigar, an English professor at told with impeccable delicacy a story of friendship between two women of different backgrounds. adds an element that the author has not addressed before: extreme violence.
