Rajmahal

"The encompassing achievement of the novel is its penetration of a new stage in our human history: Sengupta's is among the first and unquestionably to me the most revealing description of the life of the post-colonialist and post-colonized living on, somehow together. The colonizers who have lost the sense of what home they came from, and the colonized finding they have become inexorably something like the people from whom they struggled so long to gain their freedom."--Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Marriages, affairs, suicides, duplicitous relations, second chances, murder, madness, and true love--Rajmahal is a beautifully crafted tale of families brought together in an unusual Bengali house over a century of turbulent changes. Within the walls of this stately home, the melting pot of tenants, alive and dead, struggle to come to grips with the social, economic, and intellectual forces working in India as it moves from the British Raj to independence. Their intertwined fortunes and personal battles become a mirror of the struggle for possession of the country's future.

Kamalini Sengupta is the author of two novels: A Seasoned Couple and Rajmahal (previously entitled The Top of the Raintree). Trained at the London School of Journalism, she freelances for newspapers and magazines published in India, the UK, and Hong Kong. As the head of The Surya Trust, she films documentaries that aim to correct misconceptions about Indian life.