The Inexhaustible

In the 1980s Kanchan, an old Brahmin woman, returns to Jashapar, the village in the Jhalawad region of Saurashtra where she was born, and stays at a village shrine. There her memories take over. Her father had gone to Karachi after falling out with his own father; she was married to Amrut, whose father Devshankar was mentally unstable; and when communal riots broke out at Partition the family had to escape the city, a journey that cost her dearly. Moving back and forth between present and past across four generations, the novel traces how one woman carries displacement, violence and the weight of a feudal, patriarchal order. The title refers to an inexhaustible vessel, an image of endurance.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

276 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

India, Pakistan

First published

1999 by R. R. Sheth & Co.

Author's age

45 when first published

ISBN

9789387567245 (Sahitya Akademi, India)