"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live."

- (Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Work Without Hope")

I've read a lot of Asian-American and Indian-American literature. My second English class focused quite a bit on "mixed" American writers. Korean-American, Indian-American, Japanese-American, Chinese-American, African-American, and the list, as I remember, goes on. It was an interesting period in my reading because I was reading literature that I would never have picked up on my own. Not to mention, much of it was in the form of short stories which I wouldn't find on my own. A lot of the work was photocopied specifically for the class out of books that I would never go near.

My favorites were the Indian writers. I think I lost my adoration for them a bit when I worked on Dharamvir Bharati's The Blind Age during sophomore year, though. Among these writers were Jhumpa Lahiri and Bharati Mukherjee (my favorite was Mukherjee's short story - "A Father"). Their work is so beautiful and honest and still retain a bit of grit. That being said, I'm very surprised that I never came across Kamala Markandaya. In fact, when I picked it up in the library's fiction section and finally looked to see what it was, my initial reaction was to return it to the shelf because I thought I HAD read it or that I should have, and I was not looking forward to reading something my teacher would have had me read. But then I glanced at the back and decided to check it out anyway.

I'm so glad I did.

It's the kind of novel you have to read the back of. Not because there's something lost in translation or because the story is hard to follow, but because you need to be prepared. I can best describe it as the story of a woman with nothing to lose who loses almost everything. It's sweet, it's damp and dirty, it's about tradition and modernity, it's honest and beautiful, it's tragic and it's wonderful. And even in its sadness, its tragedy, and its dirt, it is hopeful.

Even in its frankness, it is hopeful. In the first 2 pages, you know how it will end. You know all of the tragedies that will happen in this woman's life. And yet you're drawn in. You keep reading even though you know it's going to be a big bad scary path. And you're rewarded for going with her on her journey. The visual quality of Markandaya's writing allows you to escape into that world, pretty or not. Strongly - very strongly - recommended. ( )

I am pretty sure that when Kamala Markandaya sat down to write this book, the tale of an Indian peasant woman right around the time of decolonization, that she wrote a list called Terrible Things That Can Happen to an Indian Peasant Woman. Then she turned that list into an outline. The first two-thirds of this novel are pretty unrelenting in terms of the bad things that happen: famine, accusations of infidelity, famine, workers being laid off, famine, infants dying, famine, sons being worthless, more famine. At times it became annoying, but the character of Rukmani holds the book together, as a simple, believable figure doing what needs to be done to get by and never complaining. The book really picked up, however, in Part II, when Rukmani and her husband have to travel into the city, and they end up completely out of their element. It's devastatingly sad, but it's also gripping, probably because I, too, fear the city. I think also this works because in Part I, a part of you thinks that they don't have to be doing what they're doing and if they go somewhere else things would be better... but Part II shows you that's untrue, as the only way things can go is to get worse.

One of my favorites! Sad and poweful story about a very poor farming family living in rural India. ( )

This is a book I read in my senior year world literature class. We learn about the lives of peasants in India and watch one thing after another go wrong for one woman and her family. She does not realize how lucky she is with anything until it gets worse. We slowly learn just how hard the life of a peasant can be as they struggle to survive. Though things are depressing, the story is fascinating. ( )

I love books about other cultures, and I enjoyed this one about a woman in India ( )