Difficult Daughters
By (Author) Manju Kapur
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
12th August 2010
1st May 2010
Main
United Kingdom
Paperback
288
Width 125mm, Height 200mm, Spine 14mm
220g
Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, Difficult Daughters is the story of a young woman torn between the desire for education and the lure of illicit love. Virmati, a young woman born into a high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor - a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home alongside his furious first wife and helps her with her studies, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.
Manju Kapur lives in New Delhi, where she is a teacher of English literature at Miranda House College, Delhi University. Her first novel, Difficult Daughters, received tremendous international acclaim. Her second novel A Married Woman was called 'fluent and witty' in the Independent, while her third, Home, was described as 'engaging, glistening with detail and emotional acuity' in the Sunday Times.