Githa Hariharan

This novel is really a three-part portrait: of Devi, her mother Sita, and of Mayamma, the housekeeper of her husband's house. All three women are (or were) suppressed in some way after their marriages. Devi’s is an orthodox Tamil family and we meet her when the book opens, studying in USA. She is friends (the relationship is far from entirely clear) with Dan, a black student. She nevertheless decides to return home, rejecting Dan’s marriage proposal, and soon marries Mahesh, in a show more “suitable” arranged marriage. Devi doesn’t know what she wants and her stumbling not surprisingly leads to one wrong decision after another. Before long, she has become a meek housewife, continuously on the run: first from America, then from Dan, then from her mother, her house, her husband and then from her lover—always in search of something that she cannot understand or identify. The women of the past—her mother, her housekeeper—offer different understandings of a woman’s role but it’s not clear that she has learned much from any of them. Each one’s story has something to offer, to show what it means to stay and endure and what it means to break free and move on. But this is a bleak tale, and though largely well-written, didn’t greatly impress me because there is no convincing lesson in the end, no takeaway. (That said, I should note that this was Hariharan’s first novel and was good enough to win the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first novel in 1993.) show less

A novel about storytelling and storytellers, especially female, typically powerless ones. Hariharan takes the myth of Shahrzad and begins after it ended, with her sister Dunyazad returning to Shahrzad's palace to help her husband construct her tomb. Echoes of the Taj Mahal in its vast splendour and the Sultan's obsession and the consequences. Dunyazad and a scheming maidservant with a peculiarly hairy mole meet and share stories, including many of a hair-covered woman who was eventually show more ostracised by her community -- revolving around the possibility that Shahrzad escaped and they can too, from the entrapments of the old 1001 Night story and the present concerns of their lives. When Dreams Travel is a curious, meandering book, beautifully written. show less