The Bride - Hardcover

Sidhwa, Bapsi

3.49

1,348 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312095376 ISBN 13: 9780312095376

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1983

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Forced to become the bride of an inscrutable man from her former village, Zaitoon rebels against tradition and searches for new meaning in her life

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About the Author:

Distinguished international writer Bapsi Sidhwa lives in America but travels frequently to the Indian subcontinent. She has published four novels: An American Brat, Cracking India, The Bride and The Crow Eaters, and she has been translated into German, French, Italian and Russian.

Among her many honors Sidhwa received the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award in 1994, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest national honor in the arts, and the LiBeraturepreis in Germany. Ms. Sidhwa has also been a Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard. Sidhwa, who was on the advisory committee to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Women's Development, has taught at Columbia University, University of Houston, Mount Holyoke College, and currently holds the Fanny Hurst position at Brandeis University. Cracking India (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Quality Paperback Book Club selection), has been made into the film Earth by noted Canadian director Deepa Mehta. Coming on the heels of Mehtas award winning film Fire, Earth is scheduled for release in the United States in the fall of 1999.

Review:

Quotes from reviews of 'The Bride'

Alamgir Hashmi in "World Literature Today": "The two story lines (Zaitoons and Carol's), combine to produce a splendid tale - at a level far above that which is familiar in Pakistani Anglophone writing."

"Jerusalem Post": "The author manages to capture the conflict of pride and kindness in the Moslem psyche. She also portrays beautifully a Pakistan still in a state of upheaval, and as yet confused as to its destiny and future."

Andrew Sinclair in the London "Times": "Bapsi Sidhwa is a powerful and dramatic novelist who knows how to flesh out a story."

"Good Housekeeping": "What I loved about 'The Bride" was its passion and vitality. Bapsi Sidhwa writes with immense vigour and liveliness and she has brought her world and people exuberantly to life."

Penelope Lively in "The Sunday Telegraph": "There is plenty of vivid and forceful writing here; the smothering rules of a repressive religion are seen in action - the fetid female 'cencanna,' the suppressed and violent sexuality of the men."

"Financial Times": "Sidhwa shows a marvellous feel for imagery - at a breathless pace she weaves her exotic cliffhanger from passion, power, lust, sensuality, cruelty and murder."

"The Yorkshire Post": "Indian novelist Bapsi Sidhwa's first novel, 'The Crow Eaters' was a comic delight. Her second, 'The Bride' displays the same fesh storytelling and keen eye for the hilarious idiosyncracies of human life, but its core is serious - the harsh and lonely plght of women among the Northern tribes......this is a fluent and lively novel, crowded with interest - not the least of which is the description of the secret, womb-like world of purdah and the women's quarters."

"The Examiner": "SWhat a wonderfully descriptive writer she is, really introducing the reader into a new world. One hopes that there will be many more novels from the pen of this most sensitive writer."

Gitanjali Singh in "Far Eastern Economic Review": 'The Bride' is fast moving and interesting enough. Sidhwa's genius, however, lies in her style. She has a rare sense of fun that is irresisible. The naturalness of her descriptions of the physcial - be it the look, the body or the sexual act - is a unique feature among the Subcontinent's women writers."

"Company": "Candour compels the admission that recent novels of India, albeit prize-winning and peerless of prose, have not always been easy on the digestion. But those shamed to admit they never managed to complete the weightier Raj writings should turn with fearless appetites to Bapsi Sidhwa's 'The Bride.' Sidhwa beckons us deep into the primitve hills of Kohistan, then to bazaar-spiced Lahore at the crisis of Partition."

"The Telegraph": "Bapsi Sidhwa's 'The Bride' reveals to the western reader a way of life that is completely alien. Sidhwa writes with the same vivacity that made the author's first novel, 'The Crow Eaters' so memorable."

"India Abroad": Iingenious and dramnatic, Sidhwa's forceful literary traits make 'The Bride' one of the finest books to come out of the expanding South Asian literary scene."

Starred review -" Kirkus" "With Sidhwa's keen awareness of breath-stopping scenery, of complex societies, of the Muslim woman's peculiar strengths and acute vulnerabilities: a delicate tale of power and intelligence, never over-bearing in its message-delivery."

"Publishers Weekly": "Sidhwa, a Pakistani, writes dramatically of marriage, loyalty, honor and their conflict with old ways in this well-told tale."

"Houston Chronicle": "There is a Kiplingesque quality to Sidhwa's writing, the congenital ability to make one feel the ambiance of the locale: the stifling heat, the poverty, and yet the warmth which exists between families .....There is an inocent eroticism in 'The Bride' which is both touching and illustrative of the complete naivete the child brings to the wedding bed."

"Atlanta Journal & Constitution": With an entertaining, highly readable writing style, Ms. Sidhwa draws the reader into Pakistan and its peculiar - and yet universal - problems. Her conclusion, not completely definitive, does what any good book does. It leaves us wanting more."

Back to the Bapsi Sidhwa homepage

bsidhwa@brandeis.edu -- Publisher Comments

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