A Kind of Meat and Other Stories by Catherine Thankamma is a provocative collection of stories with a shared theme: innocent children and audacious women—wives, mothers, daughters, widows—carrying the burden of living in a conservative and hypercritical country.

In the eponymous story, young Saira inadvertently admits to eating beef during Christmas celebrations—what follows is a storm of judgement and fear when the landlord comes knocking at the door. In ‘The Road Home’, after the death of her husband, Theresa feels devastated when her own sons betray her trust, forcing her to confront the painful truth that love can often be traumatic. In ‘Madhu’, a middleclass woman’s hostility gives way to compassion as she gets to know the colony’s garbage collector. In ‘Tara’, a mother sheds her inhibitions and helps her young daughter overcome a learning disability. In ‘Pieta’, the lens shifts to Mother Mary—the story probes the weight of love and grief that only a mother can know when her child is victimized and put to death. In each of the stories, the characters undergo a quiet transformation as they subtly sidestep the demarcated boundaries that society has imposed upon them and forge new identities propelled by love, loss, and longing. With their profound insights into human nature, these stories show how small yet radical acts of resistance can transform ordinary lives oppressed by retrograde customs and prejudices.