For a first time novelist Madhuri Vijay displays consummate skill in depicting a young woman’s search for a lost figure from her childhood. As Shalini ventures into her odyssey to the beautiful land of Kashmir in search of a man, what unfolds is the crux of the story of ‘The Far Field’.
It’s an elegant, epic novel, from a new talent–Bangalore-based Madhuri Vijay. The story follows the woman’s search for a lost figure from her childhood. It is a journey that carries her from Bangalore to Kashmir and to the brink of a devastating political and personal reckoning.
In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged, naïve and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote village in Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to track him down.
But as soon as Shalini arrives, she is confronted with the region’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. As life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make series of choices that could have dangerous repercussions for the people she has come to love.
With rare acumen and evocative prose, in ‘The Far Field’ Madhuri gives a potent critique of Indian politics and class prejudice through the lens of a guileless outsider, while also offering up a profound meditation on grief, guilt and the limits of compassion.
The New York Times Book Review described it as, ‘Consuming…Vijay’s command of storytelling is so supple that it’s easy to discount the stealth with which she constructs her tale, shifting time frames with seamless ease and juggling a wealth of characters who cling to the heart.’
‘Vijay probes grand themes – tribalism, despotism, betrayal, death, resurrection – in exquisite but unflowery prose, and with sincere sentiment but little sentimentality,’ said the New Yorker while author Pankaj Mishra described it as, ‘Ingeniously conceived and elegantly written…a first novel of startling accomplishment.’
Udayan Mitra of publisher HarperCollins India, said, “The Far Field is an astonishing novel of discovery, in which a young woman from Bangalore travels all the way to the mountains of Kashmir to find her mother’s missing friend – and ends up having to confront some unpleasant truths about her own family past and the corners of the country we live in but know so little about.
‘This is a literary debut the world is raving about and when you read the book, you’ll see why. We at HarperCollins are thrilled to bring Madhuri Vijay’s novel to readers in India,’ Mitra added.
(UNI)
