The Gypsy Goddess by Meena Kandasamy
LONGLISTED FOR 2014 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE Laugh-out-loud funny, brilliantly original and angry, The Gypsy Goddess is as much a novel about a true-life massacre as it is a novel about the impossibility of writing a novel about a true-life massacre. It sits on the line between powerful fiction and fearsome critique. Tamil Nadu, 1968. Village landlords rule over a feudal system that forces peasants to break their backs in the fields or suffer beatings as punishment. In the misery of their daily lives it is little wonder that the Communist Party begins to gain traction, a small spark of defiance spreading from villager to villager. As communities across the region begin to take a stand against the landlords, the landlords vow to break them; Party organizers suffer grisly deaths and the flow of food into the market-places dries up. But it only serves to make the villagers' resistance burn more fiercely. Finally, the landlords descend on one village to set an example to the others...
Dazzling, maddening, often hilarious.. Kandasamy's in-your-face narrative is unashamedly tricksy but handled with sublime confidence * The Times *
Powerful... The Gypsy Goddess has a lyrical, radical core, which offers bold perspectives on the relationship between poverty and power * Guardian *
It would take Carol Ann Duffy, Caroline Criado-Perez, Kandasamy's hero Arundhati Roy and, if her first work of fiction The Gypsy Goddess is anything to go by, Salman Rushdie to match Kandasamy's infinite variety... The Gypsy Goddess is a novel of self-conscious experimentalism and unmistakable fury, it throws down a gauntlet to conservative literary and political sensibilities * Independent *
Powerful... The Gypsy Goddess has a lyrical, radical core, which offers bold perspectives on the relationship between poverty and power * Guardian *
It would take Carol Ann Duffy, Caroline Criado-Perez, Kandasamy's hero Arundhati Roy and, if her first work of fiction The Gypsy Goddess is anything to go by, Salman Rushdie to match Kandasamy's infinite variety... The Gypsy Goddess is a novel of self-conscious experimentalism and unmistakable fury, it throws down a gauntlet to conservative literary and political sensibilities * Independent *
Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is a poet, fiction writer, translator and activist who was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010). She holds a PhD in socio-linguistics from Anna University Chennai, has represented India at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program and was made the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent, Canterbury. The Gypsy Goddess is her first novel.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781782391784 |
| ISBN 10 | 1782391789 |
| Title | The Gypsy Goddess |
| Author | Meena Kandasamy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Atlantic Books |
| Year published | 2014-04-03 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |