Pyre

Books

From the author of One Part Woman and The Story of a Goat, both longlisted for the National Book Award for Translation, comes a new novel about love, intolerance, and violence. Saroja and Kumaresan are young and in love. Devoted to one another, they marry quickly before returning to Kumaresan's family village in rural India, where they hope to build a life together. However, even as they remain hopeful that the villagers will welcome them with open arms, they are harboring a secret: Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the villagers find out, they will both be in danger. It is only a matter of time before the villagers' suspicions towards Saroja build to a boiling point. Faced with hostility from Kumaresan's mother and her new neighbors, and fearful that their intolerance will convince her beloved husband to leave her, Saroja tries to adjust to a new life of loneliness, deprivation, and insecurity, while Kumaresan struggles to scrape together enough money for them to start over ...