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I read Madhuri Vijay's The Far Field as part of two challenges (#20backlistin2020 and #backlistgotbackedup), and it's another book that I wished I had picked up earlier.⠀
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➡️ What books have you had on your shelf for a long time? Do you think you'll try to read them in 2021?⠀
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The main character is Shalini, a woman in her early 20s who is grieving the death of her mother, ⬇️

UnabridgedPod a complicated figure who in many ways dominated Shalini's sense of the world and of herself. Now, without her anchor, Shalini is floating through her life in Bangalore, going through the motions at a job she doesn't care about, seeking numbness through parties and alcohol. As she seeks to find some meaning in her mother's death, she decides to find Bashir Ahmed, ⬇️ 4y

UnabridgedPod a door-to-door salesman who became a mainstay of her and her mother's life when Shalini was a child. She's convinced that by finding Bashir again, she can understand who her mother was . . . and, by extension, who she is and could be.⠀
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Shalini travels first to Kishtwar and then to Bashir's small village, and she cuts off all contact with her father and anyone from her past. ⬇️ 4y

UnabridgedPod She is forced to confront her own privilege and ignorance as she learns about the long conflict between Muslims and Hindus that rules the daily lives of the people she meets, and the story of her own coming of age and of her mother appears in flashbacks throughout the narration. (There were also some intriguing overlaps here with Veera Hiranandani's The Night Diary, a middle-grade book I read back in October, ⬇️ 4y

UnabridgedPod which deals with some of the early days of the conflict between the Muslim and Hindu citizens of India.)
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This is a book that is rich both in writing and in story, and the narrative is challenging because of the questions it asks and the answers it offers. It is also an absolutely wonderful reading experience, and one that offered a perspective that was new to me. 4y

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