Available this month, Jill McGivering's third novel 'Daughters of India' is a sweeping historical novel that takes place in the early decades of the twentieth century against the rumblings of the campaign for Indian Home Rule.

An authentic portrayal of India from a foreign correspondent who knows it well. From the tumult of Dehli to the salt-soaked shores of the Andaman Islands, McGivering offers an insight into the dawn of modern India through memorable characters.

Isabel, born into the British Raj, and Asha, a young Hindu girl, both consider India their home. Through mischance and accident their stories intersect and circumstances will bring them from the bustling city of Delhi to the shores of the Andaman Islands, from glittering colonial parties to the squalor and desperation of a notorious prison; and into the lives of men on opposing sides of the fight for self-government.

As the shadow of the Second World War falls across India, Isabel, caught up in growing political violence, has to make impossible choices – fighting for her love for India, for the man she yearns for, and for her childhood Indian friend, in the face of loyalty to her own country.

 

Putney resident, Jill McGivering is a BBC senior foreign correspondent and now South Asia Editor, and a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’. She has won a SONY Academy Award and been shortlisted for the SONY Academy’s Journalist of the Year. Her debut novel, The Last Kestrel, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Living in Putney, she travels extensively for the BBC including assignments to Afghanistan, Pakistan and China.

Not one of the lucky winners? You can buy the novel in Waterstones in Putney Exchange ISBN-10: 0749021829.

‘This brilliantly written and evocative novel about love and friendship across a cultural divide, instantly swept me into an India struggling for self rule as WW2 drew ever nearer. I simply couldn't put it down.’
Trisha Ashley, author of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found

June 8 2017