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The Immigrant
Nina is a thirty year old English lecturer, struggling to make ends meet fornherself and her widowed mother. She sees herself as increasingly off the shelf after allnwhat prospects would an impoverished girl have without a father to marry her off? Then,nunexpectedly, a proposal arrives. Ananda is a dentist in Halifax, Canada. He has spentnhis twenties painstakingly building his career, and has had no time to get married. Thentwo start to write to each other, then talk on the phone, and finally Ananda arrives in NewnDelhi to propose. At first uncertain, Nina eventually agrees. When the two marry, shenleaves her home and her country to build a new life with her husband. But there is alwaysnmore to marriage than courtship. And as Nina discovers truths about her husband - bothnsexual and emotional - her fragile new life in Canada begins to unravel.nNo one writes about middle class family life with the nuance and tenderness of ManjunKapur. The Immigrant is another mesmerizing saga from this most beloved of novelists.
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Difficult Daughters
Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, Difficult Daughters is the story of a woman torn between family duty, the desire for education, and illicit love. Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and 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 towards further studies in Lahore, 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.