Honor : a novel

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Honor : a novel

Title:

Honor : a novel

Added Title:

Reclaiming honor.

Author:

Umrigar, Thrity N., author.

Summary:

"In Honor, Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena<U+2014>a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man<U+2014>Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one<U+2019>s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita<U+2019>s own past. While Meena<U+2019>s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her." -- Amazon.com.

General Note:

Includes "Reclaiming Honor an essay" by Thrity Umrigar, and questions for discussion.

Edition:

First Paperback edition.

Physical Description:

334 pages ; 21 cm

Genre:

Domestic fiction.

Subject Term:

Women -- Social conditions -- Fiction.

Interfaith marriage -- Fiction.

Honor -- Religious aspects -- Fiction.

East Indian American women -- Fiction.

Women journalists -- Fiction.

Women -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

India -- Fiction

Publisher:

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill,

Publication Date:

2022

ISBN:

9781643753300

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2022.

Call Number:

UMRIGAR

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003715870	New Adult Fiction	UMRIGAR Thrity	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

In this riveting and immersive novel, a Reese's Book Club pick, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar tells the story of two couples and the sometimes dangerous and heartbreaking challenges of love across a cultural divide in India.

Umrigar's new novel, The Museum of Failures , a Book Riot Best Book of 2023, is available now, too.

In Honor , Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena--a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man--Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one's own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita's own past. While Meena's fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her.

In this tender and evocative novel about love, hope, familial devotion, betrayal, and sacrifice, Thrity Umrigar shows us two courageous women trying to navigate how to be true to their homelands and themselves at the same time.

"In the way A Thousand Splendid Suns told of Afghanistan's women, Thrity Umrigar tells a story of India with the intimacy of one who knows the many facets of a land both modern and ancient, awash in contradictions." --Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

THE JANUARY 2022 REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

Author Notes

Thrity Umrigar is an Indian-American writer, who was born in Mumbai. She received her Bachelors of Science from Bombay University. She immigrated to the United States when she was 21.She then went on to earn her M.A. From Ohio State and her Phd from Kent State University. She is a journalist and the author of the novels Bombay Time, The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven. She has written for the Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, among other newspapers, and regularly writes for The Boston Globe 's book pages. She is currently assistant professor of English at Case Western Reserve University where she teaches creative writing and literature. She was a winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University. She has a Ph.D. in English and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Her title Space Between Us made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2011.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Umrigar (Everybody's Son) returns to themes of India's evolution and the transformative potential of women's relationships in her uneven latest. Despite traveling the world as a foreign correspondent, Smita Agarwal has not returned to India, the land of her birth, since her family left for Ohio when she was a teenager. But when a colleague is badly injured while reporting on a murder trial that overlaps with Smita's gender issues beat, Smita takes over the assignment. A young Hindu mother, Meena Mustafa, has accused her two brothers of killing her Muslim husband in a fire that also left Meena badly scarred. Meena's story both reinforces and complicates Smita's preconceptions about India's gender dynamics, religious divisions, and caste hierarchies. Speaking with Meena also forces Smita to confront long-hidden facets of her own past. Both Meena's recollections and Smita's narrative contain moments of emotional clarity and terror. Their propulsive stories and well-developed characterizations, however, don't quite compensate for the flat, even cartoonish, supporting characters, or for a romantic subplot involving Smita and a man she meets while reporting on the story, which reads like an afterthought. Umrigar offers readers a broad understanding of the complicated issues at play in contemporary India, but the story fails to do the subject justice. (Jan.)

Library Journal Review

In her latest, the multi-award-winning Umrigar (The Secrets Between Us) revisits a tumultuous India through the stories of two women. Indian-born, U.S.-raised journalist Smita abandons her vacation to visit Shannon, a newspaper colleague who's been hospitalized in Mumbai. Smita discovers that Shannon wants her there to take over a news story: A Hindu woman named Meena is suing her two brothers for burning her new husband to death because he was Muslim. Smita's family had its own tragic reasons for leaving India when she was a young teenager, and she remains haunted by memories that unfold painfully here. However reluctantly, she is drawn into the story, helped by Shannon's friend Mohan, who has a more hopeful (if also defensive) vision of India and is shocked by what he discovers, even as he and Smita grow close. What results is a courageous and sometimes gut-wrenching picture of rigidly held caste and religious hatreds, preening male privilege, extreme misogyny, and age-old corruption that spill into horrific violence. Yet Umrigar gives us a rounded perspective that shows how India still resonates with Smita and how it leads her to imagine a new and better nation, as represented by Meena's idealistic late husband, Abdul. VERDICT Highly recommended.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal