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Published Jan 2013
480 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Over three decades of writing, bestselling novelist Rosie Thomas has earned an untold number of awards and glowing critical praise. Like Penny Vincenzi, Thomas has long enthralled readers around the world.
It is 1941 and World War II has engulfed the globe. Newlywed Nerys Watkins leaves rural Wales for the first time in her life, to accompany her husband on a missionary posting to India. When her husband leaves her in the exotic lakeside city of Srinagar to take on a more dangerous mission, Nerys discovers a new world. Here, in the heart of romantic Kashmir, the colonists dance, flirt, and gossip as if there is no war. Nerys becomes caught up in a dangerous liaison, and by the time she is reunited with her husband, she is a different woman.
Years later, when Mair Ellis clears out her dead father's house, she finds an exquisite shawl. Wrapped in its folds is a lock of child's hair. Tracing her grandparents' roots back to Kashmir, Mair embarks on a quest that will change her life forever ...
A sweeping multigenerational tale of marriage, isolation, and finding love in a magical place, The Kashmir Shawl is the inimitable Rosie Thomas at her very best.
"Although the narrative drags in spots, and Nair's anticlimactic investigation is less compelling than Nerys' adventures, this is a finely wrought story of emotional and geographical displacement." - Kirkus Reviews
"The premise of an old shawl triggering such an extensive journey is a weak construct and advances the story only at a molasses pace. Moreover, Mair never fully reaches her potential as an interesting protagonist. Though Thomas falls short in providing a present-day storyline, she makes up for it with the compelling, scandalous tale of Nerys in 1940s India, set against the dynamic backdrop of Kashmir." - Publishers Weekly
"Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love." - The Times
This information about The Kashmir Shawl 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.
Rosie Thomas is the author of numerous celebrated novels including the bestsellers Sun at Midnight, Iris and Ruby, and Constance. A keen traveler, she has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas and traveled to Ladakh and Kashmir to research this novel.
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