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9780143457695 64e8a177d502277eb8b3dd4f The Blind Matriarch https://www.midlandbookshop.com/s/607fe93d7eafcac1f2c73ea4/64e8a177d502277eb8b3dd6c/41v4vxwd1pl-_sx309_bo1-204-203-200_.jpg

The blind matriarch, Matangi-Ma, lives on the topmost floor of an old house with many stories. From her eyrie, she hovers unseeingly over the lives of her family. Her long-time companion Lali is her emissary to the world. Her three children are by turn overprotective and dismissive of her. Her grandchildren are coming to terms with old secrets and growing pains. Life goes on this way until one day the world comes to a standstill-and they all begin to look inward.


This assured novel records the different registers in the complex inner life of an extended family. Like
the nation itself, the strict hierarchy of the joint-family home can be dysfunctional, and yet it is this home that often provides unexpected relief and succour to the vulnerable within its walls.


As certainties dissolve, endings lead to new beginnings. Structured with the warp of memory and the weft of conjoined lives, the narrative follows middle India, even as it records the struggles for individual growth, with successive generations trying to break out of the stranglehold of the all-encompassing Indian family.


Ebbing and flowing like the waves of a pandemic, the novel is a clear-eyed chronicle of the tragedies of India's encounter with the Coronavirus, the cynicism and despair that accompanied it, and the resilience and strength of the human spirit.

 
 

Review

In The Blind Matriarch, Namita Gokhale tackles our recent pandemic nightmare with courage and remarkable skill. It is a bold and entertaining novel by a hugely talented writer -- Chigozie Obioma

Here is a profoundly Indian novel, a multi-layered narrative woven around an extended family, with a blind matriarch who holds it all together at its centre; her world, a universe of sounds and smells, vague shapes and sharp thoughts, that keep her alert to everything that goes on around her. The novel set in the context of the raging pandemic that turns everything upside-down is simultaneously a fascinating family story and a record of the gruesome days of the disease when dark death stalks the dreams of the living and tests their resilience and the solidity of their domestic and social bonds. Somewhere it also grows into an allegory of our existence as a nation with its vulnerabilities, its hierarchies, and its battles to transcend its losses and failures, touchingly narrated with all the confidence of a committed and experienced storyteller with her rare insights into human relationships with their complexities, and their special modes of surviving crises. -- K. Satchidanandan

The blind Matangi-Ma registers the changing dynamics of her family during the extended lockdowns, as they begin to re-examine their life and purpose, reconcile with old secrets, and form new bonds. Namita Gokhale's twentieth novel is a story of love and loss, of the resilience and triumph of the human spirit. -- Hindustan Times

About the Author

Namita Gokhale is an award winning writer and festival director. She is the author of eleven works of fiction and has written extensively on myth as well as the Himalayan region. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. Her recent novel Jaipur Journals, published in January 2020, was set against the backdrop of the vibrant Jaipur Literature Festival. Betrayed By Hope, a play on the life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, was also published in 2020.


A co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Gokhale is committed to supporting translations and curating literary dialogues across languages and cultures. She was conferred the Centenary National Award for Literature by the Asam Sahitya Sabha in Guwahati in 2017. She won the Sushila Devi Literature Award for her novel Things to Leave Behind, which also received the Best Fiction Jury Award at the Valley of Words Literature Festival 2017, and was on the longlist for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award. The Blind Matriarch is her twentieth book.

9780143457695
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The Blind Matriarch

The Blind Matriarch

ISBN: 9780143457695
₹319
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Details
  • ISBN: 9780143457695
  • Author: Namita Gokhale
  • Publisher: Penguin Books
  • Pages: 209
  • Format: Paperback
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Book Description

The blind matriarch, Matangi-Ma, lives on the topmost floor of an old house with many stories. From her eyrie, she hovers unseeingly over the lives of her family. Her long-time companion Lali is her emissary to the world. Her three children are by turn overprotective and dismissive of her. Her grandchildren are coming to terms with old secrets and growing pains. Life goes on this way until one day the world comes to a standstill-and they all begin to look inward.


This assured novel records the different registers in the complex inner life of an extended family. Like
the nation itself, the strict hierarchy of the joint-family home can be dysfunctional, and yet it is this home that often provides unexpected relief and succour to the vulnerable within its walls.


As certainties dissolve, endings lead to new beginnings. Structured with the warp of memory and the weft of conjoined lives, the narrative follows middle India, even as it records the struggles for individual growth, with successive generations trying to break out of the stranglehold of the all-encompassing Indian family.


Ebbing and flowing like the waves of a pandemic, the novel is a clear-eyed chronicle of the tragedies of India's encounter with the Coronavirus, the cynicism and despair that accompanied it, and the resilience and strength of the human spirit.

 
 

Review

In The Blind Matriarch, Namita Gokhale tackles our recent pandemic nightmare with courage and remarkable skill. It is a bold and entertaining novel by a hugely talented writer -- Chigozie Obioma

Here is a profoundly Indian novel, a multi-layered narrative woven around an extended family, with a blind matriarch who holds it all together at its centre; her world, a universe of sounds and smells, vague shapes and sharp thoughts, that keep her alert to everything that goes on around her. The novel set in the context of the raging pandemic that turns everything upside-down is simultaneously a fascinating family story and a record of the gruesome days of the disease when dark death stalks the dreams of the living and tests their resilience and the solidity of their domestic and social bonds. Somewhere it also grows into an allegory of our existence as a nation with its vulnerabilities, its hierarchies, and its battles to transcend its losses and failures, touchingly narrated with all the confidence of a committed and experienced storyteller with her rare insights into human relationships with their complexities, and their special modes of surviving crises. -- K. Satchidanandan

The blind Matangi-Ma registers the changing dynamics of her family during the extended lockdowns, as they begin to re-examine their life and purpose, reconcile with old secrets, and form new bonds. Namita Gokhale's twentieth novel is a story of love and loss, of the resilience and triumph of the human spirit. -- Hindustan Times

About the Author

Namita Gokhale is an award winning writer and festival director. She is the author of eleven works of fiction and has written extensively on myth as well as the Himalayan region. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. Her recent novel Jaipur Journals, published in January 2020, was set against the backdrop of the vibrant Jaipur Literature Festival. Betrayed By Hope, a play on the life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, was also published in 2020.


A co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Gokhale is committed to supporting translations and curating literary dialogues across languages and cultures. She was conferred the Centenary National Award for Literature by the Asam Sahitya Sabha in Guwahati in 2017. She won the Sushila Devi Literature Award for her novel Things to Leave Behind, which also received the Best Fiction Jury Award at the Valley of Words Literature Festival 2017, and was on the longlist for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award. The Blind Matriarch is her twentieth book.

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