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DELIVERANCE:
A Novella
Gauri Deshpande
Translated from the original Marathi and with an Afterword by Shashi Deshpande
Rs.225 Pb 2010
81-88965-63-4
(All rights available)
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Deliverance, first published in Marathi as Nirgathi, is a strikingly unusual novel, a powerful story about the turbulent relationships within a family that chafes at being bound together by intensely close ties. A novel about mothers and daughters, and about motherhood, told with painful and disturbing honesty.
Mimi and Shami are half-sisters who share a mother (the narrator) and a conflicted relationship with her second husband. As the story progresses, all four go through rites of passage that leave them emotionally scarred, yet more closely bound to each other than ever before. The girls grow up and find fulfilment in alien environments. The narrator and her husband realign their lives, physically and emotionally, in an all-too-familiar, poignant response. The shocking but inevitable denouement confronts one of the fundamental truths of all human bonds, even as it brings deliverance.
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GAURI DESHPANDE,
(1942-2003) bilingual poet, essayist and short story writer in Marathi and English, has been published extensively in both languages. As a translator par excellence, her most outstanding work is the translation into Marathi of the 16-volume The Arabian Nights by Sir Richard Burton’s. She has also published several collections of poetry.
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SHASHI DESHPANDE
has written novels, short stories, essays and children’s books. Three of her novels have received awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award for That Long Silence. The most recent are Small Remedies, Moving On and In the Country of Deceit. Several of them have been translated into other Indian and European languages.
Gauri Deshpande's words leap off the page—needle-sharp, intensely alive. Full of pain and flavour.
—Manjula Padmanabhan
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