Book review
Devayani chooses to live alone in the small town of Rajnur after her parents’ death, ignoring the gently voiced disapproval of her family and friends. Teaching English, creating a garden and making friends with Rani, a former actress who settles in the town with her husband and three children, Devayani’s life is tranquil, imbued with a hardwon independence. Then she meets Ashok Chinappa, Rajnur’s new District Superintendent of Police, and they fall in love despite the fact that Ashok is much older, married, and—as both painfully acknowledge from the very beginning—it is a relationship without a future. Deshpande’s unflinching gaze tracks the suffering, evasions and lies that overtake those caught in the web of subterfuge.
There are no hostages taken in the country of deceit; no victors; only scarred lives. This understated yet compassionate examination of the nature of love, loyalty and deception establishes yet again Deshpande’s position as one of India’s most formidable writers of fiction.


About the author Shashi Deshpande was born in Dharwad, India, daughter of the renowned dramatist and Sanskrit scholar, Shriranga. At the age of fifteen she went to Mumbai, where she graduated in Economics; she then moved to Bangalore, where she gained a degree in Law. The early years of her marriage were largely given over to the care of her two young sons but she took a course in journalism and for a time worked on a magazine. Her writing career only began in earnest in 1970, initially with short stories, of which several volumes have been published. She is also the author of four children’s books and four other novels—That Long Silence, If I Die Today, Come Up and Be Dead and Roots and Shadows, which won a prize for the best Indian novel of 1982-83. Shashi Deshpande lives in Bangalore with her Pathologist husband, and has recently completed her MA in English literature.