Sister India - Softcover

Payne, Peggy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573229105 ISBN 13: 9781573229104

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2002

Synopsis

The exotic and suspenseful New York Times Notable Book that tells the story of an eccentric guest-house keeper in Varanasi, India, and the passions evoked by her sacred city along the Ganges

The Lonely Planet recommends the Saraswati Guest House, and meeting Madame Natraja, "a one-woman blend of East and West," as well worth a side trip. Over the course of a weekend, several guests turn up, shocked to encounter a three-hundred-some-pound, surly white woman in a sari. Then a series of Hindu-Muslim murders leads to a citywide curfew, and they unwittingly become her captives. So begins a period of days blending into nights as Natraja and her Indian cook become entangled in a web of religious violence, and their guests fall under the spell of this ancient kingdom--at once enthralled and repelled by the begging children, the public funeral pyres, the holy men bathing in the Ganges at dawn.

This is a traveler's tale, a story about the strange chemistry that develops from unexpected intimacies on foreign ground. And Peggy Payne's extraordinary talent vividly conjures up the smells of the perfume market, the rhythms of holy men chanting at dawn, the claustrophobic feel of this ancient city's tiny lanes, and the magic of the setting sun over the holy Ganges. For anyone who has harbored a secret desire to go to India and be transformed, Sister India, called "mesmerizing" by Gail Harris and "a modern version of E. M. Forster's classic A Passage to India" by Dan Wakefield, takes you on this journey without ever leaving home.

About this title

From the Author:

Author Peggy Payne will be happy to talk with your book group by speakerphone without charge if you are reading her new novel Sister India. She'll answer your questions and discuss her time living in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. She'll talk as well about the book publication process, and explain how she came to write about a woman who weighs 400 pounds, and another character gripped by irrational obsessions. She'll talk for as much as an hour about this odd love story in an exotic setting. ppayne51@cs.

About the Author:

Peggy Payne is a journalist and travel writer who has published articles on more than twenty-five countries. She has been the recipient of an NEA grant to study fiction at Berkeley, and an Indo-American Fellowship to research this novel in Varanasi. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including God: Stories and New Stories from the South. She lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1573229105
• ISBN 13: 9781573229104
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320