The Blind Matriarch by Namita Gokhale And Malashri Lal
The blind matriarch, Matangi-Ma, lives on the topmost floor of an old house with many stories. From her eyrie, she hovers unseeingly over the lives of her family. Her long-time companion Lali is her emissary to the world. Her three children are by turn overprotective and dismissive of her. Her grandchildren are coming to terms with old secrets and growing pains. Life goes on this way until one day the world comes to a standstill-and they all begin to look inward.
This assured novel records the different registers in the complex inner life of an extended family. Likethe nation itself, the strict hierarchy of the joint-family home can be dysfunctional, and yet it is this home that often provides unexpected relief and succour to the vulnerable within its walls. As certainties dissolve, endings lead to new beginnings. Structured with the warp of memory and the weft of conjoined lives, the narrative follows middle India, even as it records the struggles for individual growth, with successive generations trying to break out of the stranglehold of the all-encompassing Indian family. Ebbing and flowing like the waves of a pandemic, the novel is a clear-eyed chronicle of the tragedies of India's encounter with the Coronavirus, the cynicism and despair that accompanied it, and the resilience and strength of the human spirit.
Namita Gokhale is a writer, publisher and festival director. She is the author of sixteen works of fiction and non-fiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, published in 1984, has remained a cult classic and has been issued in a double edition with its sequel, Priya. Gokhale has worked extensively across genres on Indian mythology, including her retelling of the Indian epic in the Puffin Mahabharata, and her novel for young readers, Lost in Time: Ghatotkacha and the Game of Illusions. The edited anthologies Himalaya: Adventures, Meditations, Life and The Himalayan Arc: Journeys East of South-east provide valuable resource material on the culture and politics of the region. Gokhale is also founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and of Mountain Echoes, the Bhutan Literature Festival. She is director of Yatra Books, a publishing house specializing in translation.
Malashri Lal, professor in the English department of the University of Delhi, recently retired from her academic and administrative positions. Currently she is member of the English Advisory Board at the Sahitya Akademi. Her specialization lies in literature, women and gender studies, and she has to her credit around fifteen books including The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English, Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women's Writing, In Search of Sita: Revisiting Mythology and Tagore and the Feminine: A Journey in Translations. Lal has been a senior consultant to the Ministry of Culture, a University Grants Commission (UGC) nominee on committees and a member of international book award juries.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780670093564 |
| Title | The Blind Matriarch |
| Author | Namita Gokhale And Malashri Lal |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Penguin Random House India |
| Year published | 2021-09-27 |
| Number of pages | 208 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |