The Cost of Freedom

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's latest book traces the history of India through the lives of ordinary women

- Priya Srinivasan

WITH HER LATEST BOOK, Independence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni establishes her ease with writing women into history as with writing mythological feminist parables. The novel weighs the cost of independence as a historical question against a narrative of ambition, love and loss through the Ganguly sisters—Priya, Deepa, Jamini. Riven by the tumultuous events leading to Partition, their lives become a microcosm of the nation’s turbulence. Redemption only arrives through painstaking self-actualization.