New Releases by Shauna Singh Baldwin

A nation is in transition, traditions are in upheaval. When destiny is challenged, who makes the decisions of life and death?

"With her arranged marriage in jeopardy, Sheetal Talwar attempts suicide. The woman who talks her out of it claims to be Draupadi - the Draupadi from the Mahabharat, the epic drama about the battle of the Pandava and the Kauravs three millenia ago. When Sheetal recovers and thanks her, Draupadi asks an expensive and difficult favour. Sheetal tries to evade her obligation to reciprocate - and her life begins to echo Draupadi's. Sheetal's very name means cool, and she believes we are so different now - are we?" -- Publisher's website.

"The ten stories in We Are Not in Pakistan illuminate a paradox: love and fear draw us together, yet drive us to extremes of separation." "Sixteen-year-old Kathleen believes her family would be normal if not for her Pakistani grandmother. Olena, a Ukrainian woman living in Moscow, discovers that her husband's new posting will draw her dangerously close to her disapproving mother-in-law. Fletcher, a Lhasa Apso, finds himself in the middle of a game between his mistress and her commitment-phobic boyfriend. Tania tries to transform herself from an exotic dancer into the wife her doctor husband wants. Opposites clash and realign until the very last story, when Dr. Karanbir Singh receives an e-mail from a young woman who professes to be the child of his 1980s green-card marriage." "Eliciting amusement, curiosity, and wonder mingled with sadness for a post-9/11 world, Shauna Singh Baldwin lures us toward the displaced men, women, and other animals who populate these stories. Along the way, she explores our complex human responses to technology, art, and, most of all, our fellow humans."--Jacket.

From the author of What the Body Remembers, an extraordinary story of love and espionage, cultural tension and displacement, inspired by the life of Noor Inayat Khan (code name “Madeleine”), who worked against the Occupation after the Nazi invasion of France. When Noor Khan’s father, a teacher of mystical Sufism, dies, Noor is forced to bow, along with her mother, sister and brother, to her uncle’s religious literalism and ideas on feminine propriety. While at the Sorbonne, Noor falls in love with Armand, a Jewish musician. Though her uncle forbids her to see him, they continue meeting in secret. When the Germans invade in 1940, Armand persuades Noor to leave him for her own safety. She flees with her family to England, but volunteers to serve in a special intelligence agency. She is trained as a radio operator for the group that, in Churchill’s words, will “set Europe ablaze” with acts of sabotage. She is then sent back to Occupied France. Unwavering courage is what Noor requires for her assignment and her deeply personal mission — to re-unite with Armand. As her talisman, she carries her grandmother’s gift, an heirloom tiger claw encased in gold. The novel opens in December 1943. Noor has been imprisoned. She begins writing in secret, tracing the events that led to her capture. When Germany surrenders in 1945, her brother Kabir begins his search through the chaos of Europe’s Displaced Persons camps to find her. In its portrayal of intolerance, The Tiger Claw eerily mirrors our own times, and progresses with moments of great beauty and white-knuckle tension towards a moving and astonishing denouement.

Excellent

"Shauna Singh Baldwin's passionate stories dramatize the lives of Indian women from 1919 to today, from India to North America, and from the closed circle of the family to the wilderness of office and university. These women inhabit silence; by saying little, they can know everything. Some, imprisoned by silence, choke on their knowledge. Some use knowledge with bloody force against their oppressors. And some harness its power to seize their freedom."--Jacket.