Nectar In A Sieve (Classics)

Description

The acclaimed million-copy bestselling novel about a woman’s struggle to find happiness in a changing India. Married as a child bride to a tenant farmer she had never met, Rukmani works side by side in the field with her husband to wrest a living from a land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects. With remarkable fortitude and courage, she meets changing times and fights poverty and disaster. This beautiful and eloquent story tells of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loves—an unforgettable novel that “will wring your heart out” (Associated Press). Includes an Introduction by Indira Ganesan And an Afterword by Thrity Umrigar

About the Author

Pseudonym used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, an Indian novelist and journalist. A native of Mysore, India, Markandaya was a graduate of Madras University, and afterward published several short stories in Indian newspapers. After India declared its independence, Markandaya moved to Britain, though she still labeled herself an Indian expatriate long afterward.Known for writing about culture clash between Indian urban and rural societies, Markandaya's first published novel,Nectar in a Sieve, was a bestseller and cited as an American Library Association Notable Book in 1955. Other novels includeSome Inner Fury(1955),A Silence of Desire(1960),Possession(1963),A Handful of Rice(1966),The Nowhere Man(1972),Two Virgins(1973),The Golden Honeycomb(1977), andPleasure City(1982/1983).Kamala Markandaya belonged to that pioneering group of Indian women writers who made their mark not just through their subject matter, but also through their fluid, polished literary style.Nectar in a Sievewas her first published work, and its depiction of rural India and the suffering of farmers made it popular in the West. This was followed by other fiction that dramatized the Quit India movement in 1942, the clash between East and West and the tragedy that resulted from it, or the problems facing ordinary middle-class Indians—making a living, finding inner peace, coping with modern technology and its effects on the poor.