Swarnalata

This genre-bending, heavily lauded novel of three women in the winds of history, now available in America for the first time.

Three women: Tora, Lakhi, and Swarnalata. They live on the cusp of a new era in Assam, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when tradition is being challenged by the new concept of ‘modernity,’ where issues like education for women is front-and-center, and where the plight of the indentured laborer and peasant is rubbing up against a system of colonial exploitation, threatening a conflagration.

Amidst this exciting time the three women are caught in the whirlpool of change, charting out a new course in life heroically, silently. Bringing actual historical figures into the epic narrative, Swarnalata straddles the line between history and fiction, and with three astounding women at its center, is a tale that is—in a word—timeless.