Golden Cage: Urdu Short Stories by Asian Women in Britain

This book is a collection of translated stories written by Indian and Pakistani women now settled in Britain. The stories have been written from two seperate but interlinked perspectives - of the displaced and uprooted immigrant trying to adjust to the new way of living in a cold and often unfriendly racist neighbourhood; of women becoming increasingly aware of changing values and the burden of traditional constraints imposed on wives by husbands following patriarchal norms and authoritatian ways with greater fervour when fearful of their erosion in permissive Britain. While the feminism of most of the writers is not overt or accentuated, it runs like an undercurrent through the entire collection, treated with detatchment and irony in some stories or with emotional intensity in others.