Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
Written by Balli Kaur Jaswal
Narrated by Meera Syal
4/5
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About this audiobook
‘Big-hearted, earthy and funny… A rattlingly good story’ Deborah Moggach, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Every woman has a secret life…
When Nikki takes a creative writing job at her local temple, with visions of emancipating the women of the community she left behind as a self-important teenager, she’s shocked to discover a group of barely literate women who have no interest in her ideals.
Yet to her surprise, the white dupatta of the widow hides more than just their modesty – these are women who have spent their lives in the shadows of fathers, brothers and husbands; being dutiful, raising children and going to temple, but whose inner lives are as rich and fruitful as their untold stories. But as they begin to open up to each other about womanhood, sexuality, and the dark secrets within the community, Nikki realises that the illicit nature of the class may place them all in danger.
East meets west and tradition clashes with modernity in a thought-provoking cross-cultural novel that might make you look again at the women in your life…
Balli Kaur Jaswal
The daughter of a diplomat, Balli Kaur Jaswal was born in Singapore and grew up in Japan, Russia, and the Philippines. She received a BA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in Virginia and a PhD from Singapore’s Nanyang Technical University. Her essays and op-eds about diaspora, censorship, racism, and sexuality have appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, The South China Morning Post, Harper’s Bazaar, and Salon.com. She lives with her family in Singapore, where she is a professor at Yale-NUS.
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Reviews for Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
679 ratings77 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved everything about this book. The storyline had a lot of twists and turns which caught my attention to the end. It was a beautiful transformational story and very inspiring.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Comedy, suspense and girl power! Everything you could want from a audiobook.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I absolutely loved how the author sneaked in a "thriller mystery" while also reflecting some aspects of a very traditional and tight community.
I thoroughly enjoyed the different voices of the women in this story, how each has their own thing going. I found the women highly relatable and real.
The read is a good flow with serious aspects, quick humor, naughty parts. Wonderful book. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. Funny, relevant, and human. Absolutely loved it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely outstanding book and narration. This book will resonate with many women for years to come. Deeply moving without being overbearing, flawed characters, multiple viewpoints, it is a book that will linger in the mind long after it's over.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very well read as an audio book. Funny, relatable, full of suspense & twists.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely brilliantly performed, there were times I forgot that it was just one narrator as she characterised each voice so clearly. I really enjoyed the story, truly heart warming and at time laugh out loud funny.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing book, giving an insight into the punjabi community in London. Funny, heart warming and emotional.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved it. I like the feel good ending to it ??
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great story. Excellent narration. It took awhile for me to get into the story but the pay off was worth it. Rich characters, funny banter and I learned a lot about the culture.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I had no idea in what I was getting in and what a delightful twist, So recommend.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5LOVE IT! It's heartwarming, hilarious and thrilling all at the same time!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What a fun listen - naughty thoughts lead to fun stories
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The novel Is highly entertaining ! Would highly recommend it!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A pleasantly wonderful book I will recommend to friends far and wide! Looking forward to more from the author.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A touching story about unfolding taboos, love, sensuality, community. Enjoyed it very much
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really good! I really liked this story. It was unexpected
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A story full of surprises. Exploring the lives of Punjabi women migrants to the UK the author unearths raunchy secrets in a patriarchal society where women’s rights are buried in traditional marriage beliefs. Beautiful erotica and heartfelt stories of love and longing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The beat book I have read in ages. I wanted something lighthearted and humorous. This book was all that and more. There was humour, suspense, joy, sadness and it was wonderfully uplifting . There were times I laughed out loud and was rather glad I was alone. A simply magical read
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5(Audiobook version) Very entertaining book, colorful, inspiring, with an amazing narrator. Reads like a movie. Highly recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I thought this was going to be a romcom-esque story but turned out to be so much more! There were fun, sad, happy and indignant moments, I enjoyed the novel very much. And for the audiobook format itself, Meera Syal is an excellent reader!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Such a well written and interesting book. The notator also added to my enjoyment
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heartily enjoyed this. An inside glimpse of our shared humanity, desire for love and creative spirit. Beautifully written.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Reasonably well written, if a little obvious. Well read. Not exactly a page turner, but enjoyed it nonetheless
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Highly entertaining! Great as an audiobook as the narrator does different voices.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Firstly, thank you to LibraryThing for providing me with a free copy of this book and I'm so sorry I didn't get to it sooner.This is a lovely, fun story that I found to be a very quick read (it's just that I didn't have time to read it! My fault, nobody else's, of course.)I adored the setting, which was mostly in Southall, an area of London predominantly populated by Punjabi people (say that five times fast). I loved learning about Punjabi traditions, like dining in the gurdwara langar hall as a community, how Punjabi women all take on the last name Kaur and Punjabi men take the last name Singh. How the community is tight-knit and protective of their own but, like any community, are uneasy about newcomers and can easily turn on group members with nasty, untrue gossip. Nikki was one of those outsiders. She is a Sikh and Punjabi, yet she was never part of the Southall community, having lived outside of it in Enfield.When she unexpectedly starts teaching a small group of Punjabi widows how to read and write in English initially, her membership into the Southall community is instant but not necessarily welcome. The women are suspicious of Nikki and her modern, millennial ways. She smokes, she doesn't pray at the temple, she doesn't even speak Punjabi that well. But reading and writing in English takes a glorious turn, and I think one can figure out where these lessons lead to...What I was surprised about was the murder mystery-esque quality that the novel took on. I wasn't expecting Nikki to become entangled in the drama of her boss's life and the life of her students. This is not an issue in and of itself, I enjoyed the drama. What I had a problem with was Nikki's pushiness and nosiness into the lives of her students, all of whom were older than her and had lived much longer lives than she had. I think it's possible that the passage of time in this story moves very quickly, and so maybe I've underestimated just how much time had passed since the beginning of Nikki's teaching and her comfort level with her students. It seemed, not sudden, per se, but a little sped up in how quickly she became chummy with the widows, seeing as the start of their relationship was very rocky and lacking in trust, on both sides.I liked Nikki, I really did. I just had some issues with her 'I'm a university graduate so I'm learned in all things' attitude. I thought it was odd how she just chose to show up at Sheena's place of work and demanded to know about the mystery behind Karina. It felt very presumptuous to me that Nikki just expected Sheena would acquiesce to answering her very personal questions immediately. While she was at work! Moreover, how is a 22-year-old telling a widow in her forties how to have a relationship with another man? Why is Nikki so confident about her life skills and relationship-management that she feels she can delve out how-to advice to a woman twice her age? In this sense, Nikki irked me, but overall, I found her to be a lovely girl with a good heart and good intentions. She helped give these lonely, sometimes lost, elderly women a voice and a purpose in a world where they are essentially forgotten about once their husbands are no longer in the picture.I also really enjoyed the romance in the novel, which I think helped cement the 'Nikki pretends to be 45 but really she's 22' sort of vibe she gave off. That's the only reason I'd give this four stars instead of five because I wasn't in love with Nikki's character, but that is obviously just a personal preference and doesn't reflect on the wonderful writing and story line. I highly recommend this book! It was so much fun.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great novel! Loved the story and the characters. An important book worth reading
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows lives up to its name. It is entertaining and at times feels like reading parts of steamy romance novels. However, there is a lot more to the book. It is about a group of women finding their voices--after their husbands have died and they are no longer regarded in their society as they once were. They became invisible. The stories definitely changed all that.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I like it! It has erotica, mystery (who knew) and everything in between.
I liked that the narrator interpreted everything with an accent and made the story real with her intonation - sighs, tiredness, sadness. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Such a good story! Funny and heartwarming. It should be turned into a movie!