The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey From an award-winning novelist, a stunning portrait of late Raj India--a sweeping saga and a love story set against a background of huge political and cultural upheaval.YOU ASK FOR MY NAME, THE REAL ONE, AND I CANNOT TELL. IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF EFFORT. In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl. As a maidservant in a British boarding school, Pom is renamed Sarah and discovers her gift for languages. Her private dreams almost die when she arrives in Kharagpur and is recruited into a secretive, decadent world. Eventually, she lands in Calcutta, renames herself Kamala, and creates a new life rich in books and friends. But although success and even love seem within reach, she remains trapped by what she is . . . and is not. As India struggles to throw off imperial rule, Kamala uses her hard-won skills--for secrecy, languages, and reading the unspoken gestures of those around her--to fight for her countrys freedom and her own happiness. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Sujata Massey is an Edgar and Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee and winner of the Agatha and the Macavity Award for her ten Rei Shimura mystery novels set in Japan. Born in England to an Indian father and a German mother, Sujata Massey grew up mostly in the United States and earned her BA from the Johns Hopkins Universitys Writing Seminars program. She then worked as a reporter at The Baltimore Sun before marrying and moving to Japan. She now lives in Baltimore with her husband and children. Review "Trapped by her past and uncertain of her future, the peasant girl Kamalas journey toward independence-personal and political-unfolds in this riveting historical novel.The award-winning author of the Rei Shimura mysteries turns to 1930s-40s India, with the British in control of the colony as Gandhi and others fight for freedom. The setting gives new life to the familiar story of an orphan girl struggling to make her way in a cruel world. Clever Kamala is front and center throughout, as Massey builds her coming-of-age tale around India as it moves toward independence, effectively combining personal narrative with the grandeur of a sweeping historical epic. The characters are easily categorized, but deft storytelling prevents them from being predictable. The book is also notable for its detail-driven depiction of the limitations imposed by caste and colonization. The Sleeping Dictionary, an utterly engrossing tale of love, espionage, betrayal, and survival, is historical fiction at its best, accessible to all audiences." Review Quote "Trapped by her past and uncertain of her future, the peasant girl Kamalas journey toward independence-personal and political-unfolds in this riveting historical novel.The award-winning author of the Rei Shimura mysteries turns to 1930s-40s India,with the British in control of the colony as Gandhi and others fight for freedom. The setting gives new life to the familiar story of an orphan girl struggling to make her way in a cruel world. Clever Kamala is front and center throughout, as Massey builds her coming-of-age tale around India as it moves toward independence, effectively combining personal narrative with the grandeur of a sweeping historical epic. The characters are easily categorized, but deft storytelling prevents them from being predictable. The book is also notable for its detail-driven depiction of the limitations imposed by caste and colonization. The Sleeping Dictionary , an utterly engrossing tale of love, espionage, betrayal, and survival, is historical fiction at its best,accessible to all audiences." Excerpt from Book The Sleeping Dictionary CHAPTER 1 The Flower says I was born from the dust. Kindly, kindly Let me forget it Let me forget it Let me forget. --Rabindranath Tagore, "The Flower Says," Chandalika, 1938 JOHLPUR, WEST BENGAL, 1930 You ask for my name, the real one, and I cannot tell. It is not for lack of effort. In a proper circumstance, the narrator must give her name. In fact, one of the first English phrases I learned was "What is your good name?" Over the years people have called me many things. Not all of them are repeatable. But in the early days, I was always called Didi or Pom, the last being a village nickname you will not find in any book. To me, Pom sounds hard: a hand on a drum, or rain pounding on a tin roof. Both are sounds that I remember from the Bengali village where I was born: Johlpur, the Town of Water. Pom, Didi, Pom! Those who shouted for me the most were my younger sisters, Rumi and Jhumi, twins who looked as similar as grains of rice. But what a difference between them! Rumi was the easy one: quiet and helpful. Jhumi cried more and always demanded to be carried, even when she and Rumi were big strapping girls of six. Double curses was what my grandmother Thakurma called them. But when our father, who we called Baba, was alone with us, he would sometimes say that a daughters birth lengthened a fathers life and that for having three strong girls he might live to one hundred. I tell you this only so that you will understand how rich I once was. But nobody in my family understood that those days were perfect ones. Most mornings when my mother made her prayers, she whispered her hopes for a son. If Goddess Lakshmi would bring one, my mother was willing to give her a goat. Or five rupees. Anything, for the boy everyone wanted. Then, in the spring of 1930, the flatness under Mas sari rounded. Thakurma and Dadu--my grandparents--were suddenly happy with everything she did, and my father sang songs every evening. As summer came, my mothers belly expanded to the size of a good pumpkin. I marked my tenth birthday, and we ate sweet payesh pudding to celebrate. It was the same time that the daughter of Jamidar Pratap Mukherjee, the landed aristocrat who owned all the rice fields, was studying with a foreign governess. The jamidars daughter had long been my object of fascination because of her lacy pastel frocks and the white-skinned doll she carried. I did not know the little girls name then, for we could not ask such a thing of our superiors. In my mind I called her the Princess; and that was not out of envy but amazement that another little girl could be so different. My acquaintance with the jamidars household formed at the time I was about seven, old enough to walk distances carrying a bundle of homemade brooms that Ma and I sold throughout the villages. When we reached the jamidars estate, the ritual was always the same. A servant would call for the jamidarni to see us; she would come out with her daughter hiding behind the folds of her shining silk sari. Then our two mothers would examine the brooms: hers looking down, and mine squatting on the stone veranda, turning over each of our brooms to find her the best. The jamidarni would suggest that her sweeper didnt really need a new broom, then my mother would counter, Jamidarni-memsaheb, the rains are coming and with them, mud! Or, if it were a few months earlier: This is a frightfully dry season, please look at the dust on your veranda; its a shame that your sweeper missed it. Not the womans fault, just the brooms. On our last call to the estate, my mother was heavily pregnant and could not make her usual bright banter. Perhaps because of my mothers condition, the jamidarni gave me a gaze that seemed especially soft. This gave me the bravery to ask where the Princess was hiding herself. The jamidarni replied with a word I hadnt heard before: school. Two Ingrej women came to the house to teach the Princess reading and writing and numbers--all in English! The Ingrej had turned a parlor into a proper schoolroom with a desk and chair and a blackboard on which they wrote with a short white stick. "Would you like to see her?" the jamidarni asked in her gentle voice. As I was nodding my head, Ma said no. Disappointment flooded me, but she ignored the look I gave her. The jamidarni asked my mother why I wasnt in school. Shed heard some village children were learning to read and write under the banyan tree behind Mitra-babus shop. Then I understood what she meant by the word school, because Id seen boys sitting in Mitra-babus yard, scratching with reeds on palmyra leaves. For a girl like me, there would never be time to sit under a tree; that was why Ma hadnt wanted me to see the jamidarnis daughter in her special room. I said to myself that it didnt matter; I didnt want to be the only girl studying with those boys, and I was already doing something more important than they: I was with Ma, earning money for the family. And I didnt need a numbers class to know how to count coins; by the age of ten, I was proud that I couldnt be cheated. All this I wished I could say to the jamidarni, but it wasnt my place. Ma was murmuring something about needing my help now that a baby was coming. She placed her hand on her belly, emphasizing this, and the jamidarni pledged that she would make a special prayer for a boy. Ma smiled at this, looking as grateful as if the jamidarni had bought ten brooms. And that day, the jamidarni bought her broom without bargaining. We did not have such luck at other places on our route. By mid-afternoon, my mother and I slowly trailed home, the heat wrapping itself around us like a scratchy woolen shawl. We were still a month from the arrival of the monsoon, and the last weeks were always the worst. By the time we were home from broom selling, I was as wet as if Id played the Two Turtles game in the pond with Rumi and Jhumi. I knew that for my mother to carry her waiting baby during that last hot month was not only uncomfortable but also physically risky. Some women in the village had even muttered to one another that it would be a blessing if Ma lost the stone she carried, because three girls first was only likely to bring a fourth. Everyone knew that wed had trouble. Dadu was forced to sell the one rice paddy he owned to meet the debts of our family, and now his son, my Baba, farmed for others, receiving as payment a portion of rice. Still, we were not poor like the ragged ones living in the alleys of the village. These were the ones my mother called lost souls, and if they came for food, she still always gave something. We had potatoes and eggplants and tomatoes and greens from our own vegetable garden. Fruits beckoned from old abandoned orchards and from neighbors who did not mind sharing. To buy foodstuffs we could not grow, my mother raised a small amount from selling the brooms in summer and catching fish during rainy season. I would do all this work with her until it was time for my marriage, and then Rumi and Jhumi would do the same. "Your face is our jewel," Ma would say sometimes, and I would laugh and crinkle my nose in embarrassment, because I felt awkward compared to the rosebud prettiness of the twins. But I knew that of all the girls in the family, I looked the most like Ma. It might help me get a husband, especially since there was no dowry we could give. At ten, I didnt think much about marriage, even though my mother had married at eight, moving into my grandparents hut to live with them and Baba when she was thirteen. I was born two years after that. Sadly, Mas parents died from typhoid before my annaprasan, the six-month first-rice-eating celebration of a childs life. So I had nobody around except my two sisters, my parents, and one set of grandparents. In our village, this was a very small family. Two nights after our final broom-selling journey, I awoke to realize that Thakurma was hovering near Ma. Baba was lighting the oil lamp. Thakurma whispered to me that my mother was going to have the baby soon, and that I should take my sisters to sleep outside and then fetch Chitra-massi, the dai who lived in Johlpur village. Thakurma reminded me to call Chitra-massis name four times at the door: to call her once or twice might lead her to worry that I was a nighttime ghost. I thought this was nonsense, but her door did not open until the fourth time I called. Together, Chitra-massi and I raced back to the hut, carrying her special bucket and cloths. Then Thakurma took her inside and ordered me to rest with the twins. It was a hot night, so it should have felt easier to sleep outside. But how could any of us sleep as the minutes turned to hours and our mothers groans evolved into a tigers roar? Village women flowed toward our hut like ants on the trail of a dropped piece of sweet shondesh. I knew they felt especially concerned because Ma could not go to her childhood home to give birth, since her parents had passed. Mas cries grew wilder, but still the baby would not budge. Eventually Chitra-massi told my father to fetch Dr. Dasgupta from the next village. My father rode off with a neighbor in his cart; it was some hours later that they returned with the doctor. The sky was light and my mother was hardly crying at all, which made me fear for her al Details ISBN1476703167 Author Sujata Massey Edition Description Original Language English ISBN-10 1476703167 ISBN-13 9781476703169 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 813.54 Residence Baltimore, MD, US Short Title SLEEPING DICT Year 2013 Publication Date 2013-08-20 Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2013-08-20 NZ Release Date 2013-08-20 US Release Date 2013-08-20 UK Release Date 2013-08-20 Pages 528 Publisher Simon & Schuster Imprint Simon & Schuster Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:76373496;

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