About Independence
India, 1947. In a rural village in Bengal live three sisters, daughters of a well-respected doctor.
Priya: intelligent and idealistic, resolved to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor, though society frowns on it.
Deepa: the beauty, determined to make a marriage that will bring her family joy and status.
Jamini: devout, sharp-eyed, and a talented quiltmaker, with deeper passions than she reveals.
Theirs is a home of love and safety, a refuge from the violent events taking shape in the nation. Then their father is killed during a riot, and even their neighbors turn against them, bringing the events of their country closer to home.
As Priya determinedly pursues her career goal, Deepa falls deeply in love with a Muslim, causing her to break with her family. And Jamini attempts to hold her family together, even as she secretly longs for her sister’s fiancé.
When the partition of India is officially decided, a drastic–and dangerous–change is in the air. India is now for Hindus, Pakistan for Muslims. The sisters find themselves separated from one another, each on different paths. They fear for what will happen to not just themselves, but each other.
- Complete Title: Independence
- Format: Hardcover
- Language: English
- Number of Pages: 288
- Publication Time: January 17, 2023
- Publisher: William Morrow
- ISBN: 0063142384
- ISBN13: 9780063142381
About Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her themes include the Indian experience, contemporary America, women, immigration, history, myth, and the joys and challenges of living in a multicultural world. Her work is widely known, as she has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies. Her works have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese. Divakaruni also writes for children and young adults.Her novels One Amazing Thing, Oleander Girl, Sister of My Heart and Palace of Illusions are currently in the process of being made into movies. http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/books…. Her newest novel is Before We Visit the Goddess (about 3 generations of women– grandmother, mother and daughter– who each examine the question “what does it mean to be a successful woman.”) Simon & Schuster.
She was born in India and lived there until 1976, at which point she left Calcutta and came to the United States. She continued her education in the field of English by receiving a Master’s degree from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
To earn money for her education, she held many odd jobs, including babysitting, selling merchandise in an Indian boutique, slicing bread in a bakery, and washing instruments in a science lab. At Berkeley, she lived in the International House and worked in the dining hall. She briefly lived in Illinois and Ohio, but has spent much of her life in Northern California, which she often writes about. She now lives in Texas, which has found its way into her upcoming book, Before We Visit the Goddess.
Chitra currently teaches in the nationally ranked Creative Writing program at the Univ. of Houston. She serves on the Advisory board of Maitri in the San Francisco Bay Area and Daya in Houston. Both these are organizations that help South Asian or South Asian American women who find themselves in abusive or domestic violence situations. She is also closely involved with Pratham, an organization that helps educate children (especially those living in urban slums) in India.
She has judged several prestigious awards, such as the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner Award.
Two of her books, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into movies by filmmakers Gurinder Chadha and Paul Berges (an English film) and Suhasini Mani Ratnam (a Tamil TV serial) respectively. Her novels One Amazing Thing and Palace of Illusions have currently been optioned for movies. Her book Arranged Marriage has been made into a play and performed in the U.S. and (upcoming, May) in Canada. River of Light, an opera about an Indian woman in a bi-cultural marriage, for which she wrote the libretto, has been performed in Texas and California.
She lives in Houston with her husband Murthy. She has two sons, Anand and Abhay (whose names she has used in her children’s novels).
Chitra loves to connect with readers on her Facebook author page, www.facebook.com/chitradivakaruni, and on Twitter, @cdivakaruni.
For more information about her books, please visit http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/, where you can also sign up for her newsletter.
Reviews Independence
Historical fiction has been my favourite genre and it is books like these that make me fall in love more and more with this genre, and in general, with reading! This was my first Chitra Banerjee book…
Piyush Bhatia
Sad and yet inspiring story of three sisters in India in 1946…
Em Lost In Books
3+The year 1947 is an important date in India’s history. It is when Britain granted India its Independence, seemingly, a wonderful event. Although many leaders, such as Gandhi and Nehru, wanted a un…
Barbara
Finished reading this book , absolutely unputdownable ! This book is set in Bengal against India’s independence movement, a story of three sisters . It is written in multiple narratives and it bring…
Payal Sachdeva
It’s been a couple of hours since I finished reading this book ( read it in one sitting ) and I’m still trying to believe that Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wrote it.My first and biggest grouse is that m…
Shweta
“The year is 1947. It is the best of times, and it is the worst of times.”The story is set when India was going through a period of partition. It is a beautiful tale of 3 sisters born in the same…
Neha Shehrawat
In 1946, with the Second World War over and Indian independence finally on the horizon, Indians were beginning to dream of a country truly their own, where the racist and arbitrary dictums of British…
Madhulika Liddle
Set during the tumultuous times of Independence, this book was unputdownable. The tensions soared high, nation was on the brink of breaking into two halves and people perhaps for the first time realis…
Krutika Puranik
I have read and (mostly) enjoyed every single book written by the author. So, it pains me to say this- of all the rich stories that could have emerged from 1946-54 Bengal, is this the best she could d…