Illuminated

When the light shifts, you see the world differently. Against a rising tide of fundamentalism in India, a mother and daughter lose the most important man in their lives. Shashi, fifty-something and suddenly widowed, tries to contact her only daughter, Tara, to break the news, but cannot reach her. As Shashi confronts her loss, she finds, amidst grief, unexpected new freedoms.Meanwhile, Tara, a spoiled but brilliant university student, has retreated to Dharamsala to deal with the fall out from an ill-advised relationship. Her self-imposed solitude makes contact near impossible, so by the time she learns of her loss, the funeral is already over.Without the man that bound them, Shashi and Tara struggle to reconcile. But his absence also makes them a target for an emerging religious group determined to put women in their place, and Shashi and Tara individually prepare to defend their independence.If mother and daughter are to come together, they must find a way to understand both their new world, and each other. But can you ever emerge from an eclipse unscathed?'An extraordinary novel that catches your breath on the first page and simply won't let you put it down.' Andr Aciman'Ghose's sentences are like X-rays: nothing is hidden or can be hidden.' Akhil Sharma'Powerful, evocative and accomplished it's hard to believe The Illuminated is a debut.' Alice Ryan