Vijay smartly resists psychoanalyzing her, implying that the china-shop bulls in our families can be survived but never entirely explained away.”- New York Times Book Review The show-stealer is Shalini’s mercurial mother, an ‘outrageous queen’ of capricious gestures. “Consuming… Vijay’s command of storytelling is so supple that it’s easy to discount the stealth with which she constructs her tale, shifting time frames with seamless ease and juggling a wealth of characters who cling to the heart. One of BookBrowse’s Top 20 Best Books of the Year

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionĪn Indies Introduce pick, an IndieNext selection, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, a Hudson Booksellers Best Book of 2019, a Publishers Weekly Book of the Week, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019, an Economist Best Book of the YearĪ Most Anticipated Book of 2019 for Entertainment Weekly, Refinery29, Business Insider, and Bustle Shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature Winner of the 2019 JCB Prize for Literature With rare acumen and evocative prose, in The Far Field Madhuri Vijay masterfully examines Indian politics, class prejudice, and sexuality through the lens of an outsider, offering a profound meditation on grief, guilt, and the limits of compassion. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.

But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize-winner Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present. The Far Field does both.”-Anthony Marra, author of The Tzar of Love and Techno Few novels generate enough power to transform their characters, fewer still their readers. Madhuri Vijay traces the fault lines of history, love, and obligation running through a fractured family and country. “ The Far Field is remarkable, a novel at once politically timely and morally timeless. Winner of the 2019 JCB Prize for Literature About the Book

The far field vijay