Image for The Blind Matriarch

The Blind Matriarch

See all formats and editions

The blind matriarch, Matangi-Ma, lives on the topmost floor of an old house with many stories.

From her eyrie, she hovers unseeingly over the lives of her family.

Her long-time companion Lali is her emissary to the world.

Her three children are by turn overprotective and dismissive of her.

Her grandchildren are coming to terms with old secrets and growing pains.

Life goes on this way until one day the world comes to a standstill-and they all begin to look inward. This assured novel records the different registers in the complex inner life of an extended family.

Like the nation itself, the strict hierarchy of the joint-family home can be dysfunctional, and yet it is this home that often provides unexpected relief and succour to the vulnerable within its walls. As certainties dissolve, endings lead to new beginnings.

Structured with the warp of memory and the weft of conjoined lives, the narrative follows middle India, even as it records the struggles for individual growth, with successive generations trying to break out of the stranglehold of the all-encompassing Indian family.  

Read More
Special order line: only available to educational & business accounts. Sign In
£10.46 Save 25.00%
RRP £13.95
Product Details
Penguin
0143457691 / 9780143457695
Paperback / softback
823.914
14/11/2022
India
209 pages
129 x 198 mm