The Blind Lady's Descendants

Amar Hamsa is born on the day his maternal uncle Javi takes his own life, and he grows up resembling him more and more in looks and temperament. His parents, Hamsa and Asma, fight in silence and have not spoken for years; their blind matriarch presides over a decaying house known as the Bungalow in a small coastal town. As the 1990s unfold, with state television, new refrigerators and the shock of the Babri Masjid demolition, bad luck piles up: his brother Akmal, a tinkerer with radios, drifts into religion and then fundamentalism, and family secrets surface. At twenty-six, Amar addresses an imaginary audience and recounts it all with dry, dark humour.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

297 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

India, 1990s

First published

2014 by Tranquebar Press

Author's age

44 when first published

ISBN

9789384030179 (Tranquebar Press, India)

9780143425717 (Penguin Books India, India)