Honor Hardcover – January 4, 2022 by Thrity Umrigar

Description

Author: Umrigar Thrity

Package Dimensions: 0x229x788

Number Of Pages: 336

Release Date: 04-01-2022

Details: Product Description
In this riveting and immersive novel, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar tells the story of two couples and the sometimes dangerous and heartbreaking challenges of love across a cultural divide.

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.

Review
“
Honor is an utterly engrossing novel about two very different women whose lives converge after an unspeakable act of violence in India. With insight and compassion, Thrity Umrigar writes masterfully about the complexities of hatred and love, estrangement and belonging, oppression and privilege, about holding on and letting go. A powerful, important, unforgettable book.”

—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild

“
Honor is a novel of profound depths—cultural, personal, romantic, spiritual. It’s also a story of tremendous grace, both in the understanding it shows its characters and in the ways they navigate a brutal but stunning life.”

—Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers

“Umrigar aptly tackles honor killings in rural India and paints Meena with agency and depth . . .
Honor boldly examines a system that continues to greenlight brutality and serves as a poignant reminder that despite all odds, ‘in every country, in every crisis, there are a handful of people who will stand against the tide.’ ”

—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Umrigar’s strength as a writer is most potent in individual scenes that distill these tensions. Just as the arc of the story builds to a crescendo, both in its hastening action surrounding the trial of Meena’s brothers and the reader’s understanding of Smita’s history, so do smaller moments . . . The many layers that comprise Honor unfurl like a peak season peony.”

—The Boston Globe

“Propulsive . . . Umrigar offers readers a broad understanding of the complicated issues at play in contemporary India.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The kind of book that makes me want to sit for hours and read… Powerful and poignant.”

—Southern Bookseller Review

“Full-bodied and insightful,
Honor is both a page-turning account of a horrific family drama and a meditation on the complexities of love—both personal and national.”

—Shelf Awareness

“Umrigar excels in her juxtaposition of the contrasts between the tech hub image of contemporary India and the deep religious divisions that continue to wrack rural regions . . . This is a thought-provoking portrait of an India that ‘felt inexpressibly large—as well as small and provincial enough to choke.’”

—Booklist

“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, permeated by a smoldering mix of ageless traditions and new ideas, beauty and brutality, hope and despair, certainty and mystery. A place where love can som