The Blue Bedspread

Jha, Raj Kamal

ISBN 10: 0375503129 / ISBN 13: 9780375503122

Published by Random House Inc, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A., 2000

About this Item

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION AND PRINTING. Internationally acclaimed India author's smash debut novel. "A midnight phone call awakens a man to inform him that his sister died in childbirth. He is told he must keep the orphaned baby girl overnight, until her new, adopting parents can collect her. Over the course of that hot night in Calcutta, the man hurriedly writes stories to the baby sleeping on a blue bedspread in the next room: stories of the family she was born into, stories of the mother she will never know. Painting half-remembered scenes, he flits between past and preseent, recounting tales of the shared childhood of a boy and his sister, who muffled their fears in the blueness of that very same bedspread. As the hours pass, the man gradually divulges a layered and transfixing confession of the darkest of family secrets." 209 pages. Glowing DJ blurbs from John Fowles, Mary Karr, The Independent on Sunday (London), The London Sunday Times, The Guardian (London), The London Evening Standard, and The Times Literary Supplement (London). A FINE COPY OF A REMARKABLE, UNFORGETTABLE TALE! LF.

Seller Inventory # 002631

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Blue Bedspread
• Publisher: Random House Inc, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375503129
• ISBN 13: 9780375503122
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

A midnight phone call awakens a man to inform him that his sister has died in childbirth. He is told he must keep the orphaned baby girl overnight, until her new, adopting parents can collect her. Over the course of that hot night in Calcutta, the man hurriedly writes stories to the baby sleeping on a blue bedspread in the next room: stories of the family she was born into, stories of the mother she will never know. Painting half-remembered scenes, he flits between past and present, recounting tales of the shared childhood of a boy and his sister who muffled their fears in the blueness of that very same bedspread. As the hours pass, the man gradually divulges a layered and transfixing confession of the darkest of family secrets.

Described by John Fowles as "remarkable, almost a coming-of-age of the Indian novel," this powerful, penetrating debut by a young New Delhi journalist has already been recognized as an international literary event. In prose that is breathtaking and precise, Raj Kamal Jha discovers the hidden violence and twisted eroticism of an exotic, overcrowded old city. Unlike the India captured in the exotic prose of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, Jha writes in a spare, straightforward style that has prompted comparisons to American realists like Raymond Carver and Don DeLillo. The Blue Bedspread is a searingly honest story about the love and hope that can survive in the midst of family violence. It is a first novel of extraordinary power and humanity.

About the Author

RAJ KAMAL JHA was born in 1966 and grew up in Calcutta. After graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, he received his master's in journalism from the University of Southern California. He lives in New Delhi, where he is an editor at The Indian Express, India's largest national newspaper. The Blue Bedspread is his first novel.