Anita Nair

A deeply serious, enjoyably lucid book about real terrors and joys, full of sensual and surprising details

Nair conveys her protagonist's dilemmas with a freshness and charm... Her writing [has] a sharpness and immediacy that lifts it above the commonplace

Modern India's vivid, sticky beauty is evoked beautifully... Nair's compassion for her characters shines through every carefully chosen word

Anita Nair demonstrates convincingly that she is a writer committed to highlighting the travails and contradictions of women's lives. Her strength lies in bringing alive everyday thoughts, desires and doubts of these six ordinary women

Nair is a powerful writer... She has created what must be one of the most important feminist novels to come out of South Asia

Meet Akhilandeswari, Akhila for short: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider.  Until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women she is travelling with the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single and be happy, or does she need a man to feel complete? <br/>
<br/>
This wonderfully atmospheric, deliciously warm novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India, revealing how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with husbands, mothers, friends, employers and children are the same the world over.

Ladies Coupe

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Kate-Atkinson

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

prhuk-authors

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

Anita Nair

Praise for Ladies Coupe

A deeply serious, enjoyably lucid book about real terrors and joys, full of sensual and surprising details

Nair conveys her protagonist's dilemmas with a freshness and charm... Her writing [has] a sharpness and immediacy that lifts it above the commonplace

Modern India's vivid, sticky beauty is evoked beautifully... Nair's compassion for her characters shines through every carefully chosen word

A deeply serious, enjoyably lucid book about real terrors and joys, full of sensual and surprising details

Nair conveys her protagonist's dilemmas with a freshness and charm... Her writing [has] a sharpness and immediacy that lifts it above the commonplace

Modern India's vivid, sticky beauty is evoked beautifully... Nair's compassion for her characters shines through every carefully chosen word

A deeply serious, enjoyably lucid book about real terrors and joys, full of sensual and surprising details

Nair conveys her protagonist's dilemmas with a freshness and charm... Her writing [has] a sharpness and immediacy that lifts it above the commonplace

Modern India's vivid, sticky beauty is evoked beautifully... Nair's compassion for her characters shines through every carefully chosen word

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter