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Leela's Book

Alice Albinia

$19.99

Paperback

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English
Vintage
15 June 2012
Shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award - a brilliantly playful and entertaining first novel, Leela's Book weaves a wonderful tale of family life in contemporary Delhi

Leela - alluring, taciturn, haunted - is moving back to Delhi after years of exile in New York. She knows her return will disrupt precariously balanced lives. Twenty years ago her sister Meera died, taking a devastating secret with her. Now, as the family gathers for a wedding, Leela must sift truth from fiction.

Meanwhile the bride's father plots political conquest, the groom realises that he has fallen in love with his brother-in-law to be, and Ganesh - elephant-headed god and scribe of India's great epic, the Mahabharata - claims both Leela and the novel as his own creation.

Brilliantly playful and entertaining, Leela's Book weaves a poignant tale of contemporary life in an ancient city.
By:  
Imprint:   Vintage
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 26mm
Weight:   230g
ISBN:   9780099548492
ISBN 10:   0099548496
Pages:   432
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Born in 1976, Alice Albinia read English Literature at Cambridge, and South Asian History at SOAS. In between, she worked for two years in Delhi as a journalist and editor. Her previous book, Empires of the Indus, won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Authors' Club Dolman Travel Award and the Jerwood/Royal Society of Literature Prize.

Reviews for Leela's Book

A bold and delightful novel, executed with energy and flair... Leela's Book is as much a meditation on tensions between brothers and sisters, or between parents and their children, as it is a rumination on the nature of storytelling. For a novel so thick in plot, and so lush with details of Indian life, it reads effortlessly. The result is magnificent -- Angel Gurria-Quintana Financial Times Leela's Book is a stimulating novel in which Albinia skilfully manages an intricate plot and an enormous, diverse cast of characters. Her immense historical acumen and sophisticated sense of culture have enabled her to craft a powerful tale Guardian This is steeped in the tradition of the Indian epic, yet modern and vastly entertaining -- Kate Saunders The Times Bold, playful, smart and lively Time Out An epic, polyphonic juggernaut of a novel. Ambitious, skilfully plotted, and full of wonderful surprises. I was hooked from the very first page -- Tahmima Anam, Author Of A Golden Age


  • Short-listed for Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2012
  • Shortlisted for Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2012.

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