Share this title
Lanterns On Their Horns
By Radhika Jha
₹ 399.00 inclusive of all taxes
- Or from your local bookseller.
Warning: Undefined variable $productid in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/woocommerce/content-single-product.php on line 399
Warning: Undefined variable $productid in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/woocommerce/content-single-product.php on line 407
About the book
Change does not come easily to the central Indian village of Nandgaon. The headman, Gopal Mundkur, fears it: he suspects that modern science will only cause the destruction of the fragile harmony that binds Nandgaon and its people together. But when Ramu, the village simpleton, marries Laxmi, the college educated daughter of a poor farmer, their union gives birth to a miracle that will change Nandgaon forever, and there is little Mundkur can do about it. The unlikely catalyst for this transformation is Manoj Mishra, a failed PhD in history, who believes he has found the solution to rural India’s poverty. And he will let nothing and no one get in the way of his mission – not his wife, nor the intricate mechanism of village and district administration. Gradually, these four very different people become embroiled in an epic confrontation in which their ideals and their very lives are at stake. The wide cast of characters in this unusual novel combines with playful irony and humour to lay bare an India that struggles daily and in innumerable ways with the overarching issue of modernization – the ethics of it, and its impact on traditional social structures.
Pages: 480
Available in: Paperback
Language: English
TAGS
Radhika Jha
Radhika Jha was born in Delhi in 1970, studied anthropology at Amherst College, did her Masters in Political Science at the University of Chicago and was an exchange student at the University of Paris (V). She is the author of three critically acclaimed books – Lanterns on their Horns, Smell (Prix Guerlain 2002) and The Elephant & The Maruti. She has worked for Hindustan Times and Businessworld. She has also worked for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, where she started up the Interact project for the education of the children of victims of terrorism in India. She lived for six years in Tokyo and now lives in Beijing.