Leela's Book

Description

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.

Promotion info

A brilliantly playful and entertaining first novel, Leela's Book weaves a wonderful tale of family life in contemporary Delhi

Awards

Shortlisted for Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2012.

Reviews

A talent to watch.

Author description

Born in 1976, Alice Albinia read English Literature at Cambridge, and South Asian History at SOAS. In between, she worked for two years in Delhi as a journalist and editor. Her previous book, Empires of the Indus, won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Authors' Club Dolman Travel Award and the Jerwood/Royal Society of Literature Prize.