Someone Else’s Garden
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- ¥470
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- ¥470
発行者による作品情報
A big, intensely involving and evocative Indian novel, with its story of a woman’s fight for her place in the world, reminiscent of Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’.
The dew hasn't formally evaporated off the mustard leaves outside. Except for the sleeping baby, she is alone at home. Her mother gave her this much. As an excuse Lata Bai left Shanti behind for Mamta to look after. She has an hour before her mother will return from the well.
Mamta runs her hand over her wedding sari. For a minute she considers why it is already lying unwrapped, in precise folds gleaming like a treasure in her mother's tin trunk, then she remembers her mother had used the wrapping to deliver Shanti. She picks up a corner and looks through the sheerness of the fabric. Everything turns red, the red of love. Mamta smiles. It is as it should be. "Keep my world red, oh Devi," she prays. "Jai ho Devi, Devi Jai ho," she recites her mother's words. Almost a married woman, she feels she has an equal right to them.’
Mamta is one of seven children and learns early on in her childhood what it means to be born female in rural India. Married to a savagely unkind and brutal husband, she flees to the city to try and make a new life for herself. Sharing her story are her mother, Lata Bai, the saintly Lokend, her ever-loving brother Prem, a soul-searching bandit and a brutal landlord. This is a redemptive story, despite the often unforgiving setting, and one that is difficult to put down.
About the author
Dipika Rai, was born and raised in New Delhi. She was educated in one of India’s most prestigious boarding schools in the foothills of the Himalayas and then went on to do an MBA before going into banking. After a career change, she worked as a journalist for many years, writing for publications including Vogue India and Marie Claire. She now divides her time between India and the island of Bali where she lives with her husband and two children. This is her first novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Rai's first novel, a young rural Indian woman named Mamta is given in marriage to a man so vile that he sells her kidney to buy prostitutes and fund his gambling. When Mamta learns that he plans to sell her other kidney, killing her, she flees to her home village, where her indentured father and brother help her escape to a city in central India. Once there, she finds her way and sends money to her mother, who, realizing that Mamta has left her husband, disowns her. Her brother-in-law, Lokend, arrives in the city to run for office and is badly attacked by his rival's aide, prompting Mamta to care for him. They fall in love and start a new life, bringing them back to their village, families, and a more humane existence. Though beautifully written, the story of Mamta is overwhelmed by cruelty and brutality; details on Mamta's late reconciliation with her mother and the sanctuary that the two create for abused women are but cursorily addressed. Despite the depth of feeling and the final note of redemption, many readers will find Rai's debut relentlessly bleak.
