Book peek

Books that map uncharted territories of lived experiences, voices from the fringe lands and narratives that pierce your heart. City Express offers a preview of some of the books to be read by their authors at the Kovalam Literary Festival.

A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman

Ru Freeman calls herself a Srilankan American author. The compelling Srilankan flavour of her debut novel ‘A Disobedient Girl’ echoes the political space that her prose seeks to mark. The activist-author, who holds a masters in Labour Relations and has worked in the field of international humanitarian assistance and workers’ rights, anchors her novel in a politically turbulent Sri Lanka. Biso, a desperate young mother, flees with her children from her murderous husband, nad travels from a southern coastal town to the distant hills. Latha, an orphan, is absorbed into the Vithanage family as a life-long maid to Thara Vithanage, a girl her own age. But Latha knows she was born for finer things, like the rose-scented Lux soap that she steals, and is in no doubt that she deserves them. The lives of these women, strangers to each other, gets inextricably linked to each other as they choose to give up on the faith of people they love.

India Express by Sarai Shavit

Shavit first visited India after the compulsory military service that young Israelis have to undergo once they attain 18 years of age. She went back a couple of times, having forged a spiritual connection with the place right from the start. She wrote diaries, took pictures of marvelous landscapes and literally carried the land in her psyche. Her second novel, a detective story, demanded an exotic milieu and India was her obvious choice. The novel tells the story of Mali Mualem - a captivating young woman from Tel Aviv - who becomes mired in a dangerous adventure in India, in the midst of which her older brother disappears without a trace. ‘India Express’ was originally written as an assignment at a writing workshop in which Shavit participated as part of her bachelor’s degree studies in the literature department at Tel Aviv University. The book, which straddles more than one culture, is also about the search for identity.

Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro

The accuracy of reportage blends with the consummate bluntness of a lived experience in Sonia Faleiro’s ‘Beautiful Thing’. Faleiro, an award-winning reporter and writer, tailed a teenaged bar-dancer she met in Mumbai for five years to produce the portrait in words. ‘Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars’ is hailed as one of the most original works of non-fiction from India and puts on record a very intimate account of Mumbai’s dark underworld.