The World We Found
A Novel
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4.2 • 120 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“Stunning . . . . This is a novel that rewards reading, and even re-reading. The World We Found is a powerful meditation.” —Boston Globe
Thrity Umrigar, acclaimed author of The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven, returns with a breathtaking new novel—a skillfully wrought, emotionally resonant story of four women and the indelible friendship they share
As university students in late 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But over the past thirty years, the quartet has drifted apart, the day-to-day demands of work and family tempering the revolutionary fervor they once shared.
Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. For Laleh, reunion is a bittersweet reminder of unfulfilled dreams and unspoken guilt. For Kavita, it is an admission of forbidden passion. For Nishta, it is the promise of freedom from a bitter, fundamentalist husband. And for Armaiti, it is an act of acceptance, of letting go on her own terms.
The World We Found is a dazzling masterwork from the remarkable Thrity Umrigar, offering an unforgettable portrait of modern India while it explores the enduring bonds of friendship and the power of love to change lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Umrigar (The Space Between Us) illustrates India's national identity crisis over the past 40 years through four friends who reconnect in this absorbing novel. Divorc e Armaiti is living in America with a daughter at Harvard when she's given six months to live. Her last wish is to see her three best friends again Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta, all in Bombay. In college, as idealistic Communists, they'd been inseparable, but now they're barely in touch. Kavita is a successful architect, Laleh a wife and mother, and none of them have heard from Nishta in years. When they finally find her beneath a burkha in a strict Muslim neighborhood, it becomes clear that Nishta's husband, Iqbal, a fellow university idealist turned fundamentalist, will be the biggest obstacle to fulfilling Armaiti's final desire. Umrigar is never shy in her portrayal of a divided India, deftly pinpointing major issues facing the country today and tracing them through a legacy of cultural death and rebirth. Armaiti's ruminations on unexpectedly encountering the end of one's life and Kavita's struggle to live openly as a lesbian despite supportive friends act as strong secondary narratives. Though none of the major story elements Umrigar employs are remotely fresh, her characters make this a rewarding novel.
Customer Reviews
historical fiction Bombay 1970’s -present
Great storytelling of the lives of four best girlfriends from the upper priviledged Brahmin and Parsi castes of India beginning in the era of the late 70’s. You also get a feel for the strong & dangerous divisions between Hindu, Muslim and Christian religions in the Indian subcontinent. In college the girls espouse the communist/socialist form of government by attending rallies, protests, riots, et al which is in sharp contrast to their own wealthy, rarefied lives as well as that of their friends. Those activities also get some of them into trouble which haunts them long into adulthood and middle age.
What drives them back together after leading separate lives after school & careers is one of the four living in America Is dying of a brain tumor and wants the other three to come from India and all be together one last time as her final wish. Another of the four also has a goal to stay in America to escape a now abusive, but once loved, husband.
The writing is wonderful; holds your attention with great detail: i.e. what does it feel like to have a brain tumor? Or being a gay female architect at that point in time in India, how do you have a private life? Or what does it feel like to wear that big one piece all over body covering, the Burka,that many muslim women wear. I don’t think I could breathe, or stand the frightening claustrophobia from the character’s description of wearing one.
And the ending: will the three make it to the airport in time to get to America before their friend makes a final turn to the end of her life, and before the enraged hyper-practicing Muslim husband of another races to drag her back to her over-confined and drab existence.
i learned a lot of history, geography (Bombay is next to an ocean on the continent’s southwestern side!), laws governing females and the right of husbands in that country, as well as police authority, bribing and violence.
Im definitely buying another
one of hers
Good read!!!
I was forced to read this for my eng 101 class.... One of my favorite books