Leela's Book

Leela's Book

Summary

Leela - alluring, taciturn, haunted - is moving back to Delhi after years of exile in New York. She knows her return will disrupt precariously balanced lives. Twenty years ago her sister Meera died, taking a devastating secret with her. Now, as the family gathers for a wedding, Leela must sift truth from fiction.

Meanwhile the bride's father plots political conquest, the groom realises that he has fallen in love with his brother-in-law to be, and Ganesh - elephant-headed god and scribe of India's great epic, the Mahabharata - claims both Leela and the novel as his own creation.

Brilliantly playful and entertaining, Leela's Book weaves a poignant tale of contemporary life in an ancient city.

Reviews

  • A bold and delightful novel, executed with energy and flair... Leela's Book is as much a meditation on tensions between brothers and sisters, or between parents and their children, as it is a rumination on the nature of storytelling. For a novel so thick in plot, and so lush with details of Indian life, it reads effortlessly. The result is magnificent
    Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times

About the author

Alice Albinia

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