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A Novel
by Nayana Currimbhoy
In 1974, three weeks before her twenty-first birthday, Charulata Apte arrives at Miss Timmins' School for Girls in Panchgani. Shy, sheltered, and running from a scandal that disgraced her Brahmin family, Charu finds herself teaching Shakespeare to rich Indian girls in a boarding school still run like an outpost of the British Empire. In this small, foreign universe, Charu is drawn to the charismatic teacher Moira Prince, who introduces her to pot-smoking hippies, rock n' roll, and freedoms she never knew existed.
Then one monsoon night, a body is found at the bottom of a cliff, and the ordered worlds of school and town are thrown into chaos. When Charu is implicated in the murder - a case three intrepid schoolgirls take it upon themselves to solve - Charu's real education begins. A love story and a murder mystery, Miss Timmins' School for Girls is, ultimately, a coming-of-age tale set against the turbulence of the 1970s as it played out in one small corner of India.
"An absorbing atmospheric thriller." - Publishers Weekly
"The intimate portrait the novel offers of India at this specific point in its history is compelling, as is the dramatic relationship between Charu and the deeply troubled Moira.” - Booklist
"An irresistible novel that illuminates a little-known subculture of India and hurls forward at breathtaking speed toward an unpredictable climax." - Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven
"Beautifully written, atmospheric and very funny. Ms. Currimbhoy's debut novel contains entire worlds. I couldn't put it down." - Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story
This information about Miss Timmins' School for Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nayana Currimbhoy was raised in India where she attended an all-girls boarding school in a fairly remote hill station. She moved to the U.S. in the early eighties, and has been a businesswoman and a freelance writer. She has written books, film scripts, and articles about many things, including architecture and design, and a biography of India Gandhi. Miss Timmins School for Girls is her first novel. Nayana lives in New York City with her husband (an architect) and their teenage daughter.
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