The Tiger's Daughter - Softcover

Mukherjee, Bharati

3.17

175 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014009301X ISBN 13: 9780140093018

Publisher: Penguin, 1987

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The Tiger's Daughter

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Synopsis:

WHEN TARA BANERJEE CARTWRIGHT, THE HEROINE OF THIS FIRST NOVEL, RETURNS TO HER NATIVE CALCUTTA FOR A SUMMER, SHE FINDS SHE MUST NOT ONLY BECOME AN INTERMEDIARY BETWEEN TWO CULTURES BUT ALSO BEAR WITNESS TO THE DOWNFALL OF HER OWN CLASS. TARA IS A GIFTED DAUGHTER OF BENGAL TIGER BANERJEE, A WEALTHY MANUFACTURER, WHO IS DESCENDED FROM A POET AND PHYSICIAN WHO ONCE QUELLED A HINDU-MOSLEM RIOT. TARA HAS BEEN SENT TO VASSAR, WHERE SH HAS MET HER AMERICAN HUSBAND, DAVID CARTWRIGHT. TARA'S TRIP HOME FORCES HER TO COME TO TERMS WITH HER TWO WORLDS -- AND HER GROWING REALIZATION THAT THE BRAHMIN CLASS TO WHICH SHE WAS BORN IS ABOUT TO UNDERGO A SIEGE AND POSSIBLY SUFFER ULTIMATE DEFEAT. OUTSIDE THE BANERJEES' COOL, ELEGANT HOUSE, IN THE BUSTLING ALLEYS OF CALCUTTA, STARVING NAKED CHILDREN EAT OFF THE SIDEWALKS AND SWARMS OF HOODLUMS CALL FOR REVOLUTION. TARA, WHO ADORES HER HANDSOME, IF NAIVE FATHER AND HER RELIGIOUS MOTHER, IS SHOCKED AT HER OWN FEELINGS OF DISTASTE FOR ASPECTS OF HER HERITAGE --...2. THE FUNERAL PYRES, THE TEEMING LIFE OF THE SLUMS, AND THE INTENSITY OF THE MASSES' NEEDS.

AS TARA STRIVES TO RECALL HER HUSBAND'S LIBERAL IDEAS, SHE AT THE SAME TIME VIEWS WITH SYMPATHY AND ABSURDITY AND VULNERABILITY OF HER HIGH-CASTE FRIENDS' LIVES. WHILE HER PERSONAL STORY REMAINS THE FOREGROUND OF THE NOVEL IT IS THE FATE OF HER CLASS AND ALL OF INDIA THAT HANGS IN THE BALANCE. THIS WAS MUKHERJEE'S FIRST NOVEL, FIRST PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND WINDUS IN 1973; HOUGHTON MIFFLIN IN 1971.

From the Inside Flap:

utta and schooled in Poughkeepsie, Madison, Manhattan, beautiful, luminous Tara leaves her American husband behind as she journeys back to India. But the Calcutta she finds on her return -- seething with strikes, riots, and unrest -- is vastly different from the place she remembers. In this taut, ironic tale of colliding cultures, Tara seeks to reconcile the old world -- that of her father, the redoubtable Bengal Tiger -- and the brash new one that is being so violently ushered in.

In this, her first novel, Mukherjee claimed as her subject the shock, uneasiness, and haphazard transformation that are part of the immigrant experience -- a theme she has masterfully woven into her subsequent novels, Wife and Jasmine, and into The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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