Description:
In this Indian modern classic, roofs are a special place; they are meant for wild things, for romance and for play. They are realms of freedom--freedom from the male gaze, sexual freedom, and freedom from society. Chachcho and Lalna use their roofs to build a friendship that transcends time and memory. Suddenly one day, Lalna has to leave, to return only after Chachcho's passing. Amidst rumors and gossip in the neighborhood, Chachcho's nephew tries to piece together his memories of the two women, one of whom is his mother. The truth he is searching for could destroy him forever, but to not find out is no longer an option.
Now finally published outside of India, this consummate novel of twists and turns by the International Booker Prize-winning author Geetanjali Shree, The Roof Beneath Their Feet is a contemporary novel that promises to be read for generations to come.
Brief description:
Author of five novels and five short story collections, Geetanjali Shree's work has been translated into English, French, German, Serbian, and some Indian languages. She has received and been shortlisted for a number of national and international awards and fellowships, including winning the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand. She lives in New Delhi.
Review Quotes:
"Full of exuberance and inventiveness." --John Self, The Guardian
"Shree moves fluidly between timeframes, mirroring memory to build tension, while the rhythmic prose in Soni's translation draws attention to the characters' interior lives. The compassion at the heart of the novel is deeply satisfying." --Lucy Popescu, The Times
"What does mourning look like? What is the nature of grief? These are some of the questions that Geetanjali Shree explores. In The Roof Beneath Their Feet, grief takes different forms. It spreads everywhere. Memory becomes grief. This is a lucid meditation on desire, grief and belonging." --Hindustan Times
"The Roof of Beneath Their Feet is not to be read as just a novel but perhaps as an answer to the larger questions of love, memories, language, and loneliness." --Scroll Praise for Tomb of Sand
"An extraordinarily exuberant and incredibly playful book. . . . It manages to take issues of great seriousness--bereavement, loss, death--and conjure up an extraordinary choir, almost a cacophony, of voices. . . . It is extraordinarily fun and it is extraordinarily funny." --Frank Wynne, chair of the International Booker committee
"Shree combines linguistic energy with unflagging wit to uncover the secrets and lies of Indian family life . . . [with] a marvelous ear. . . . Shree has no doubt drawn on the many writer she invokes directly in Tomb of Sand, but the novel I was most reminded of is an English-language one: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children." --New York Review of Books
"Shree is an excellent observer of women's inner lives. . . . This book, this Booker, has come at last, and for me it has come as a breath of fresh air." --The Observer
"A triumph of literature." --The Financial Times
"An homage to the vibrancy of Hindi . . . [that] takes a page from Salman Rushdie's playbook with its adept use of magic realism . . . [Shree is] unabashedly paving her own path through the sandstorm of writers pining for Western acclaim." --Washington Post