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It is 2002 and young Pablo, a city boy who has mostly lived a sheltered and privileged life in Guwahati, is visiting his ancestral village for his aunt’s wedding. This is his second time in Mayong, in rural Assam, since 1998, when he had come for a few days to attend his father’s best friend’s funeral. As the wedding preparations gather pace, Pablo is amused as well as disturbed by squabbling aunts, dying grandmothers, cousins planning to elope for love and hysterical gossips. And on this heady theatre of tradition and modernity hovers the sinister shadow of insurgency and the army’s brutal measures to quell militancy. In the days leading up to the wedding, which ends in an unspeakable tragedy, Pablo finds first love, discovers family intrigues and goes through an extraordinary rite of passage. Written with clinical precision, this gripping first novel announces the arrival of one of the most original voices from India’s North-East.
Imprint: India Penguin
Published: Mar/2012
ISBN: 9780143416135
Length : 224 Pages
MRP : ₹250.00
Imprint: Penguin Audio
Published:
ISBN:
Imprint: India Penguin
Published: Mar/2012
ISBN: 9788184759990
Length : 224 Pages
MRP : ₹250.00
It is 2002 and young Pablo, a city boy who has mostly lived a sheltered and privileged life in Guwahati, is visiting his ancestral village for his aunt’s wedding. This is his second time in Mayong, in rural Assam, since 1998, when he had come for a few days to attend his father’s best friend’s funeral. As the wedding preparations gather pace, Pablo is amused as well as disturbed by squabbling aunts, dying grandmothers, cousins planning to elope for love and hysterical gossips. And on this heady theatre of tradition and modernity hovers the sinister shadow of insurgency and the army’s brutal measures to quell militancy. In the days leading up to the wedding, which ends in an unspeakable tragedy, Pablo finds first love, discovers family intrigues and goes through an extraordinary rite of passage. Written with clinical precision, this gripping first novel announces the arrival of one of the most original voices from India’s North-East.
ARUNI KASHYAP is the author of His Father's Disease: Stories and The House with a Thousand Stories. He has edited How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency and translated two novels from Assamese to English. He also writes in Assamese. He has been the recipient of grants and fellowships such as the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and his poetry collection There Is No Good Time for Bad News was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Awards 2022, among others. He is an associate professor of English and the director of the creative writing program at the University of Georgia, Athens.