India Gray: Historical Fiction

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Travel to the Indian subcontinent with a new collection of Sujata Massey's suspenseful historical fiction. This boxed set includes five works. The title story, INDIA GRAY, is a poignant adventure set on the battlefront of Assam, India in 1945 and features Kamala and Simon, much-loved characters from the 2013 historical saga, THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY.

Next in line is THE OXFORD INCIDENT, a mystery introducing Perveen Mistry, a young law student from Bombay who is tasked with finding a disappeared Indian servant at Oxford University in 1918.

A novella set in 1920s Bengal, THE AYAH'S TALE, features Menakshi, a teenaged ayah working for an elite British family, who wonders if she will ever have a chance to live for herself.

ALIPORE CLUB RULES, a short story set in early 1950s Calcutta, features Kabita Lewes, an Anglo-Indian teenager who struggles with her parents' intense relationship and her own anxieties.

The collection rounds out with a thriller story, BITTER TEA. In the remote Northwest Frontier area of Pakistan, a peaceful Muslim village has been overtaken by foreign undamentalists. As women lose their rights to go to school or walk outside their homes, three teenage girls conspire to change the situation.

This book realistically reflects the "gray" situations that in which cross-cultural characters find themselves, habitant a world irrevocably altered by almost 400 years of colonialism.
Recent Reviews:
"Clever Kamala is at 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 Sleeping Dictionary, an utterly engrossing tale of love, espionage, betrayal and survival, is historical fiction at its best, accessible to all audiences. Recommend to readers of Arundati Roy and Bharati Mukherjee".--BOOKLIST on THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY

"Evocative descriptions of the late Raj period's Indian cultures, customs, cuisine, flora and fauna are narrated delightfully. Although this is essentially a story of love and human endurance, Massey, an award-winning author, has admirably woven the events of the Indian independence movement into the plot...this is an informative and entertaining historical novel."--HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY on THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY

"Sujata Massey beautifully depicts the life of an Indian ayah and the complicated relationships that people in the employ of their colonial masters had to deal with. Even though Menakshi endures great hardships in her life, she feels love in these pages and the prospect of a more hopeful future..."---MARIE'S BOOK GARDEN on THE AYAH'S TALE

"Massey deftly plays with several strong threads, each of which gives a certain heft to the story. She explores the relationship between parents and children, Indians and British, upper and lower classes, hope and hopelessness, India and abroad, stories and reality. Read it to find out what speaks to you most."--South of the Border, West of the Sun on THE AYAH'S TALE

This boxed set is approximately 220 regular book pages and will also release as a trade paperback edition on 11/24/2015.