Overview

“Last night there was a snowstorm that made my window disappear. I woke up thinking you had died. This is my first letter in three and a half years. First letter since I left Pakistan. First letter since Nusrat.” It is 1992. Violence is exploding in Pakistan. In India, a 16th century mosque is about to be demolished. Tanya Talati in Karachi and Tania Ghosh in Bombay write letters to each other, moving from the commonplace to what cannot be said to anyone: a mother who has fallen silent, sex that has become a weapon, bills that cannot be paid and a servant with impossibly soft hands. When Tanya's brother receives a kidnapping threat in Karachi, she sets in motion what no one could have predicted, least of all Tania, who finds herself alone in a forbidden Bombay bazaar, listening to a riot torn city draw closer and closer and closer. Tanya Tania is a story about power, love and belonging as two girls searching for selfhood become women in adolescent India and Pakistan.

Full Product Details

9789386141996

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Reviews

A warm and funny love letter written across borders - India and Pakistan need letters like these now more than ever. -- Fatima Bhutto Antara Ganguli uses a difficult literary device - letters between two Indian Pakistani protagonists - to create a narrative that immediately draws you into their intimate worlds, which are as intertwined as they are separate. Tracing their lives through a jaunty exchange of missives chronicling highs, lows, disappointments and hurts, building up gradually to disturbing events on both sides of the border, the reader gets drawn into the complex world of a friendship that refuses to recognise ugly politics but steadfastly focuses on empathy and affection. -- Shobhaa De In Tanya Tania, Antara Ganguli effortlessly pulls off a terrific feat: she makes the redoubtable old form of the epistolary novel feel fresh and vibrant and profoundly affecting. This story of two teenaged girls grows deeper and more troubling as you read it, so that, by the end, you will be holding your breath and reading swiftly to see what happens. -- Lauren Grof Tania Ghosh, on the threshold of a confused, unsupervised adulthood in Bombay, is in an abusive relationship with her lover. Tania Talati, her counterpart in Karachi, is hounded by political thugs' threats to kidnap her brother. The girls' stories are revealed in a candid and perceptive exchange of letters and bear witness to a cataclysmic end. Ganguli is a passionate and compelling writer. -- Bapsi Sidhwa

A warm and funny love letter written across borders - India and Pakistan need letters like these now more than ever. -- Fatima Bhutto Antara Ganguli uses a difficult literary device - letters between two Indian Pakistani protagonists - to create a narrative that immediately draws you into their intimate worlds, which are as intertwined as they are separate. Tracing their lives through a jaunty exchange of missives chronicling highs, lows, disappointments and hurts, building up gradually to disturbing events on both sides of the border, the reader gets drawn into the complex world of a friendship that refuses to recognise ugly politics but steadfastly focuses on empathy and affection. -- Shobhaa De In Tanya Tania, Antara Ganguli effortlessly pulls off a terrific feat: she makes the redoubtable old form of the epistolary novel feel fresh and vibrant and profoundly affecting. This story of two teenaged girls grows deeper and more troubling as you read it, so that, by the end, you will be holding your breath and reading swiftly to see what happens. -- Lauren Grof Tania Ghosh, on the threshold of a confused, unsupervised adulthood in Bombay, is in an abusive relationship with her lover. Tania Talati, her counterpart in Karachi, is hounded by political thugs' threats to kidnap her brother. The girls' stories are revealed in a candid and perceptive exchange of letters and bear witness to a cataclysmic end. Ganguli is a passionate and compelling writer. -- Bapsi Sidhwa

A warm and funny love letter written across borders - India and Pakistan need letters like these now more than ever. Antara Ganguli uses a difficult literary device - letters between two Indian Pakistani protagonists - to create a narrative that immediately draws you into their intimate worlds, which are as intertwined as they are separate. Tracing their lives through a jaunty exchange of missives chronicling highs, lows, disappointments and hurts, building up gradually to disturbing events on both sides of the border, the reader gets drawn into the complex world of a friendship that refuses to recognise ugly politics but steadfastly focuses on empathy and affection. In Tanya Tania, Antara Ganguli effortlessly pulls off a terrific feat: she makes the redoubtable old form of the epistolary novel feel fresh and vibrant and profoundly affecting. This story of two teenaged girls grows deeper and more troubling as you read it, so that, by the end, you will be holding your breath and reading swiftly to see what happens. Tania Ghosh, on the threshold of a confused, unsupervised adulthood in Bombay, is in an abusive relationship with her lover. Tania Talati, her counterpart in Karachi, is hounded by political thugs' threats to kidnap her brother. The girls' stories are revealed in a candid and perceptive exchange of letters and bear witness to a cataclysmic end. Ganguli is a passionate and compelling writer.

Author Information

Antara Ganguly works in international development and is a frequent contributor to Indian and international publications on gender and education policy. She was selected to be an Asia Society Young Leader for India and Pakistani in 2014. Her first novel, The Buggles, was published in 2001. She lives in New York.

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