Coral Strand - Softcover

Randhawa, Ravinder

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0755103440 ISBN 13: 9780755103447

Publisher: House of Stratus, 2001

From English winters to Indian summers. From the cold streets of modern Britain to the glamorous, turbulent and impassioned world of 1940's Mumbai. Each year, Sita makes a mysterious journey to the Mausoleum, the place of dark memories and warped beginnings. She goes to spy on Emily and Champa, the strange 'guardians' she once escaped, and on whom she had taken a daring revenge. This year proves to be fatefully different... This year, the terrible secrets of the past are starting to emerge; secrets that inexorably link the three women to each other, to the grey-eyed stranger Kala, and to an altogether different world - the glittering, violent and passionate world of 1940's Mumbai. Ravinder Randhawa's women, caught in a desperate fight for survival, cross taboos and forbidden lines in this richly plotted novel, imbued with fascinating historical detail, and the beauties of place and period. Readers of modern and historical novels alike will enjoy Randhawa's evocative portrait of the compelling relationship between Britain and India, which continues to enthrall and engage us.

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Synopsis:

Set in Bombay in the years running up to India's independence and fifty years later in contemporary London, the novel is the story of three remarkable women - Emily, the factory girl from Clapham who, recently married, travels to India determined to live the life of a memsahib; Champa, the plump prostitute and mistress to Emily's husband; and, in London, Sita/Ferret, the runaway girl in search of her identity and in possession of some priceless jewels which link the three women both together and with Kala - a man desperate to unravel his family's deep secrets from the past. This is an epic novel, powerfully written, with a vast, exotic landscape.

About the Author:

Ravinder Randhawa was born in India but grew up in leafy Warwickshire and now lives in London. Acclaimed for her fascinating and witty novels A Wicked Old Woman, Beauty and the Beast and the short story collection Dynamite, she is a member of PEN International and has also written on feminism, the arts and politics. She is the founder of The Asian Women Writers' Collective which published two anthologies Right of Way and Flaming Spirit. Ravinder was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Toynbee Hall, St. Mary's University and University of London.

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