Mother India

'Nobody comes to India and is not in some way changed . . .' Meena, a Jewish-American lesbian who has claimed India as her home, takes us into a darkly comic universe populated by three generations of women along with other family members, as well as by the Indians whose world they seek to penetrate. There is Meena's religiously observant mother, Ma, whose desire to remove herself from the wheel of life plays out in a Faulknerian funeral procession and cremation on the banks of the Ganga; Meena's daughter, Maya, a misunderstood child coming of age in an emotionally treacherous household; her ex-wife, Geeta, a privileged and hedonistic Indian woman who enters their world with devastating consequences; Meena's twin brother, Shmelke, a charismatic rabbi turned guru and international fugitive; and the Indian servant, Manika, whose loyalty to the family both sustains and shackles them. Universal yet intimate, brutal yet tender, satiric yet sympathetic, Mother India is Tova Reich's most poignant and astonishing novel yet.