The Highlands of Yore

A queen in the mid-sixteenth century who has to save her lineage from the enemies, a naive seventeen-year-old, wedded to a middle-aged farmer who battles her intense attraction towards another woman, a lonely housewife in a failing marriage to an ambitious businessman who is haunted by memories of her affectionate lover—what do these women have in common? The Betta is a fictitious mountain district in South India. The people residing here are isolated. What happens when a group of strangers find their way into the heart of the hills? In these interconnected stories, each woman inherits a culture in crisis from those who came before her. The voices of these women from five different centuries stand testament to the journey of one community. As time progresses, the façade of the hills change and people are hauled into this cycle. All the while the mountains stand witness to the metamorphosis, resistance, slander, tyranny and courage.

Through her writing, both fiction and non-fiction, Monisha Raman seeks to explore the imperceptible connection humans share with land. Her short stories and essays have been published by various literary and ecological magazines internationally and have also been anthologised. She is an alumnus of Granta Writers Workshop (nature writing). She lives in Chennai, South India. This is her debut work of fiction and is also forthcoming by Readomania Publishing in India.