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A Novel
by Anuradha Roy
Longlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize
Shorlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize for Best Fiction 2011
With her debut novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy's exquisite storytelling instantly won readers' hearts around the world, and the novel was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and The Seattle Times.
Now, Roy has returned with another masterpiece that is already earning international prize attention, an evocative and deeply moving tale of a young woman making a new life for herself amid the foothills of the Himalaya. Desperate to leave a private tragedy behind, Maya abandons herself to the rhythms of the little village, where people coexist peacefully with nature. But all is not as it seems, and she soon learns that no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world. When power-hungry politicians threaten her beloved mountain community, Maya finds herself caught between the life she left behind and the new home she is determined to protect.
Elegiac, witty, and profound by turns, and with a tender love story at its core, The Folded Earth brims with the same genius and love of language that made An Atlas of Impossible Longing an international success and confirms Anuradha Roy as a major new literary talent.
Paperback Original
"Roy's follow-up to An Atlas of Impossible Longing is occasionally slow going but her musical writing and strong imagery compensate, and individual moments sparkle." - Publishers Weekly
"Despite an occasional sense of drift, this understated, finely observed book expresses a haunting vision. A writer to watch." - Kirkus Reviews
"[Roy's] narrative is poised and her language precise and poetic, without being flamboyant... a story about love and hate, continuity and change, loss and grief in a convincing and memorable setting." - The Independent (UK)
"Anuradha's ability to seamlessly place the private lives of her characters within a larger socio-political setting is what she carries into her second book [as well]... at the end of The Folded Earth you feel a firm belief in the redemptive qualities of life and love." - Elle
"A gently perceptive story, half comic and half poignant, of a woman's struggle to forget her sorrows in new surroundings." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"Tight with life. ...Roy's attention to individual words pays off as she conveys the full texture of experiences. ...Even minor characters are evoked with inventive idiosyncrasy." - Daily Mail (UK)
"The Folded Earth is pure pleasure, that old fashioned sort of novel in which one can immerse oneself; an absolute treat." - Business World (UK)
"Roy has an admirably restrained style and her novel offers a vivid evocation of North India. She conjures up striking images with the lightest of touches." - The Tatler (UK)
This information about The Folded Earth 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.
Photo: Rukun Advani
Anuradha Roy is a writer and potter. She was born in Kolkata and grew up mostly in Hyderabad, India. She has written five novels. Her first, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, was translated into sixteen languages. Sleeping on Jupiter, her third novel, won the DSC Prize for Fiction 2016 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015. All the Lives We Never Lived won the 2022 Sahitya Akademi Award, among India's highest literary honours, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her non-fiction has been published in Guardian, Paris Review, Indian Express, LitHub and elsewhere. Roy lives in Ranikhet, where she is a graphic designer at Permanent Black, a scholarly press she runs with her partner.
Link to Anuradha Roy's Website
Name Pronunciation
Anuradha Roy: AH-nuh-rahd-ha
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