Someone Else's Garden: A Novel - Softcover

Rai, Dipika

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062000357 ISBN 13: 9780062000354

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2011

Synopsis

The eldest of seven children, born low-caste and female in rural India, Mamta is abused and rejected by a father who can see no reason to “water someone else’s garden” until a husband is found for her. Seeking escape in matrimony, Mamta begins her wedded life with hope—but is soon forced to flee her village and the horrors of her arranged marriage to the bustle of a small city. Saved from becoming one of the nameless and faceless millions of rejected humanity by the salvation of sublime love, Mamta struggles to find a precarious state of acceptance and make peace with her past.

Powerfully affecting and uplifting, set against a vivid and colorful background of Eastern life, Dipika Rai’s Someone Else’s Garden transcends geographical divides and cultural chasms to brilliantly expose the commonality of the human condition, compelling us to seek answers within ourselves to humanity’s eternal questions: Is life random? Do we have a destiny?

About this title

About the Author

Dipika Rai was born, raised, and educated in India. She worked as a freelance journalist for many years, writing for various publications around the globe. She divides her time between India and the island of Bali, where she lives with her husband, two children, and her devoted pets. This is her first novel.

From 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. (Feb.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0062000357
• ISBN 13: 9780062000354
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400