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- The Woman Who Climbed Trees by Smriti Ravindra
HarperCollins
presents
The Woman Who Climbed Trees
by Smriti Ravindra
One of the finest literary debuts of the past few years, the novel is
an achingly beautiful story of one family’s search for fulfilment
amid the deep psychological wounds inflicted by society.
Paperback | 432 pp | Rs 599
Available wherever books are sold | Releasing 21st May 2023
***
About the Book
Meena is fourteen years old when her parents marry her to Manmohan, a twenty-one-year-old Nepali boy she has never met. As is customary, she must leave her childhood home—along with everything and everyone she’s ever known—to relocate to Nepal and embrace the home and identity of her husband’s family.
Manmohan is in college and spends most of the year in Kathmandu, far away from the little village Meena is confined in, leaving her alone with her demanding mother-in-law as she gradually finds comfort and love in her sister-in-law.
Blending realism, ghost stories, myths and folktales, The Woman Who Climbed Trees accompanies the daring and unflinching Meena—and eventually her daughter—as she navigates life in a strange place, and struggles to manage her new family’s expectations in the uncertain tides of her diasporic life.
About the Author
Smriti Ravindra is a Nepali-Indian writer. She is a Fulbright scholar and holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Her fiction and journalism have been published globally including the US, India, and Nepal. The Woman Who Climbed Trees is her first novel. She currently resides in Mumbai, India.
***
Author, Smriti Ravindra, says, “Some days, when I was in the US, I would get this feeling that I could no longer remember the landscapes of my childhood with any vividness. My days were now spent in settings so unlike the ones I had grown up in, and my tongue was so easily accustomed to the taste of English, that I feared I had alienated Maithili and Nepali and Hindi from my life. Later, when I married a man from Tamil Nadu and moved to Mumbai with him, this sense of distance became stronger. My husband is a very urban fellow, having never lived in rural spaces, but my core is built very much upon the small towns of India and the villages of Nepal. I wrote this book mostly because I have lived chunks of my life away from home. I wrote to keep in touch with my grandmothers’ idiosyncrasies, my uncles and aunts’ cacophonies, and my childhood friends’ distinct imprints upon my life. Every time I felt like a foreigner in a new country, or a new city, I wrote about Kathmandu’s streets and Darbhanga’s terraces. Every time I was homesick, I created characters who resembled, at least a little, my mother and father. I carried within me stories and legends I had heard as a child because sometimes the new stories I inherited as an adult did not feel satisfying enough. The book is ‘finished and published’, but I haven’t as yet stopped writing it. Even as The Woman Who Climbed Trees sits in bookstores and online spaces, I continue to slip into it for a dinner with a sibling, or a chat with a stranger upon the streets, or to eavesdrop into a conversation between Kings and Queens, who I am sure do not appreciate my intrusion.”
***
Praise for the book
“The Great Nepali Novel is here! I haven’t read a better book in ages.”
—PRAJWAL PARAJULY, author of The Gurkha’s Daughter
“Smriti Ravindra’s first novel is a magnificent tale of growing up as an outsider. Her protagonist combines a prickly individuality and a strange relatability. And this despite the brooding presence of a mother whose love is veined by her own demons. If you have loved and wondered why, you will want to read this book.”
—JERRY PINTO, author of The Education of Yuri
“The Woman Who Climbed Trees is the achingly beautiful story of one family’s search for fulfilment amid the deep psychological wounds inflicted by Nepali society. Smriti Ravindra is a gifted storyteller, evoking the many inner dislocations that Meena and Manmohan suffer as they move through Sabaila, Kathmandu, Darbhanga, and Janakpur to forge a family life together. Amid the instability of their cross-border identity, they and their children Adi and Preeti discover, by turn, that while a few of their desires can find expression, most cannot. With great empathy and skill, Ravindra captures the longing, frustration, and hurt that marks the Madhesi experience. This is a remarkable novel by an exceptionally talented writer, and an essential read for those interested in Nepal and its borderlands.”
—MANJUSHREE THAPA, author of All of Us in Our Own Lives
“The Woman Who Climbed Trees is a searing tale of trauma, separation and the circumscription of women’s lives on either side of the Indo-Nepal border. This debut novel shines with vivid detail, weaving in folklore and modern cinematic references to create a portrait of heartbreak and maternal love.”
—ANNIE ZAIDI, author of Prelude to a Riot
“A lyrical, furious triumph of a novel, mapping the marital journey of its protagonist, Meena, from girlhood to motherhood, from India to Nepal, from prosaic reality to magical madness. In the tradition of Salman Rushdie and Isabel Allende, Smriti Ravindra braids epic lore and myth to a narrative of claustrophobic domesticity, earthly damage, and incandescent love.”
—MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY, author of Beowulf: A New Translation
“Through a mix of ghost stories, myths, and songs, Ravindra examines the way that women are expected to reshape their lives for men and the pain that comes with leaving everything behind. When fourteen-year-old Meena marries a man from Nepal, she moves with him to Kathmandu and quickly grows to abhor him, despite their two children together. Meena’s discontent is tempered only by the solace she finds in the women around her and their stories of being uprooted.”
—HARPER’S BAZAAR
“Ravindra debuts with a stunning chronicle of an Indian woman’s coming-of-age . . . . Many Indian and Nepali stories, songs, and myths anchor the narrative, and by the end . . . their meaning in relation to Meena becomes increasingly complex. This is electrifying.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)
***
For reviews, excerpts, interviews, and more information, please contact Vandana Rathore at
vandana.rathore@harpercollins.co.in
About the Book - The Woman Who Climbed Trees
The Great Nepali Novel is here! - PRAJWAL PARAJULYMagnificent ... If you have loved and wondered why, you will want to read this book. - JERRY PINTOMeena is fourteen years old when her parents marry her to Manmohan, a twenty-one-year-old…
About the Author - Smriti Ravindra
Smriti Ravindra is a Nepali-Indian writer. She is a Fulbright scholar and holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Her fiction and journalism have been published globally including the US, India, and Nepal. The Woman Who…
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