📖 Honor

✏️ Thrity Umrigar

📍Mumbai & Birwad (India)

👥 Smita. Mohan. Meena. Abru. Abdul.

📎 Contemporary Fiction

“Everywhere she went, it seemed, it was open season on women. Rape, female genital mutilation, bride burnings, domestic abuse - everywhere, in every country, women were abused, isolated, silenced, imprisoned, controlled, punished, and killed. Sometimes, it seemed to Smita that the history of the world was written in female blood.”

Powerful, enraging, unforgettable. I cannot put into words how deeply affecting this book is. It centres around the story of Meena - a Hindu woman who’s crime it was to fall in love and marry a Muslim man. He is burned alive by her brothers and she survives with life-changing and disfiguring injuries. Smita, a journalist born in India but living in the US since the age of 14 visits Meena to cover the story of her fight for justice. There is so much in this book to feel angry about but there is also light and beauty - an India of two halves. It will stay with me for a very long time.