Moth TPB

Delhi, 1946 Ma and Bappu are liberal intellectuals teaching at Delhi University. Their fourteen year-old daughter, precocious, headstrong Alma, is soon to be married to a fair-haired boy who is training to be a doctor: Alma is mostly interested in the wedding shoes and in spinning wild stories about evil spirits for her beloved younger sister Roop, a wild child obsessed with death. Ma and Bappu are uneasy about their clever daughter marrying so young, but political unrest is brewing and times are bad for girls in India. When Partition happens, this wonderful family - whom we have come to love and adore - is torn apart. But the resilience of the human spirit is an extraordinary thing... PREPARE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THIS FAMILY: Alma: the beating heart of the novel. We meet her as a precocious 14-year old desperate to be married, but as the book progresses, she becomes entangled with the chaos of Partition with devastating consequences Roop: Alma´s younger sister. Obsessed with death and blood, she is a fierce, funny and rather wild child trying to make sense of the destruction that has befallen her family Ma and Bappu: the girls´ parents, liberal Indians working at Delhi University. We see them as their dream of an independent India collapses under the weight of History. Ma´s experience mirrors that of the many Indian women who were hoping for new freedom under an independent India - and had to face more harassment and insecurity instead And many more: the Muslim nanny, forced to hide in a water tank; the widowed house-keeper whose mission is to keep the family together; the old grandmother, obsessed with the family´s honour and determined to preserve it no matter the cost...