| Description |
xii, 321 pages ; 22 cm |
| Contents |
Paradise pickles & preserves -- Pappachi's moth -- Big man the Laltain, small man the Mombatti -- Abhilash talkies -- God's own country -- Cochin kangaroos -- Wisdom exercise notebooks -- Welcome home, our Sophie Mol -- Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen, Mrs. Rajagopalan -- River in the boat -- God of small things -- Kochu Thomban -- Pessismist and the optimist -- Work is a struggle -- Crossing -- Few hours later -- Cochin harbor terminus -- History house -- Saving Ammu -- Madras mail -- Cost of living |
| Summary |
When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen. With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it." |
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The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale.... Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family - their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts) |
| Notes |
Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 1997 |
| Subject |
Families -- India -- Fiction.
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Social classes -- Fiction.
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Social classes -- India -- Fiction.
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Twins -- Fiction.
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Twins -- India -- Fiction.
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| SUBJECT |
India -- Fiction.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008104233
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India -- Fiction.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008104233
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| Genre/Form |
Domestic fiction.
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Psychological fiction.
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Fiction.
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| LC no. |
96039190 |
| ISBN |
0679457313 (acid-free paper) |
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