Lifting the Veil
Introduction by the winner of the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction Kamila Shamsie
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:1st Feb '18
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'Gloriously provocative... female sexuality within a patriarchal world is Chughtai's central concern' Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018, from the introduction
Lifting the Veil is a bold and irreverent collection of writing from India's most controversial feminist writer. These stories celebrate life in all its complexities: from a woman who refuses marriage to a man she loves to preserve her freedom, to a Hindu and a Muslim teenager pulled apart by societal pressures, to eye-opening personal accounts of the charges of obscenity the author faced in court for stories found in this book.
Wickedly funny and unflinchingly honest, Lifting the Veil explores the power of female sexuality while slyly mocking the subtle tyrannies of middle-class life. In 1940s India, an unlikely setting for female rebellion, Ismat Chughtai was a rare and radical storyteller born years ahead of her time.
'Ismat Chughtai is known for her iconoclastic, feminist writings which explored the inner workings of women's lives' Huffington Post
Enlightened, bold, iconoclastic, progressive and feminist... Chughtai's style makes reading a delight * Dawn *
One of the foremost Urdu writers of the 20th century, Ismat Chughtai is known for her iconoclastic, feminist writings which explored the inner workings of women's lives * Huffington Post *
Her marvellous skill with language and storytelling has resulted in the creation of some of the most powerful women characters in world literature * The Hindu *
Gloriously provocative... female sexuality within a patriarchal world is Chughtai's central concern -- Kamila Shamsie, from the introduction
Chughtai's prose is supple, energetic, argumentative, funny, caustic, and colloquial. But what really distinguishes her from her peers is a bluntness that is often brutal, and a sarcasm that is always biting. This is high-voltage writing, it can be as vituperative as it is incisive, as polemical as it is profound. * India Today *
Ismat Chughtai's work had a seminal impact on me... [her] rebellious life I carry about with me like a talisman -- Kishwar Desai, author of 'Origins of Love'
A writer who was constantly challenging accepted notions of morality and urging her readers to examine a woman's place in society * Indian Express *
ISBN: 9780241346433
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 16mm
Weight: 181g
256 pages