The Village - Brossura

Lalwani, Nikita

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0670917087 ISBN 13: 9780670917082

Casa editrice: Viking, 2012

Riassunto

The Village by Nikita Lalwani, the prize-winning author of Gifted, is a disturbing and utterly gripping modern morality tale set in contemporary India and will appeal to readers of Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake.

Ray, a young British-Asian woman arrives in the afternoon heat of a small village in India. She has come to live there for several months to make a documentary about the place. For this is no ordinary Indian village - the women collecting water at the well, the men chopping wood in the early morning light have all been found guilty of murder. The village is an open prison. Ray is accompanied by two British colleagues and, as the days pass, they begin to get closer to the lives of the inhabitants of the village. And then it feels too close. As the British visitors become desperate for a story, the distinction between innocence and guilt, between good intentions and horrifying results becomes horribly blurred.

Set in a village modelled on a real-life open prison in India, The Village is a gripping story about manipulation and personal morality, about how truly frail our moral judgement can be. Nikita Lalwani has written a dazzling, heartfelt and disturbing novel which delivers on all the promise of her first.

'A sparkling funny and poignant study of a young maths prodigy struggling with her gift and a difficult family' Gerard Woodward, Books of the Year (Gifted), Observer

Nikita Lalwani was born in Rajasthan and raised in Cardiff. Her first novel Gifted was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Desmond Elliott Prize. She lives in London.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Gripping ... Nikita Lalwani's second novel simmers with understated menace (Marie Claire)

Extraordinary... What Nikita is really, really brilliant at is voice and people (BBC Radio 2)

Lalwani's novel captures the hunger for self-improvement tinged with a pervasive sense of melancholy (Sunday Telegraph)

'Extraordinary ... Lalwani writes with wonderful clarity and intelligence (Times)

Thoughtfully and often beautifully written, The Village explores postcolonial prejudices and asks what it means to represent something 'real' (Observer)

The Village is a masterclass in compression, zooming in from a wide angle establishing shot to focus on individual lives... The inmates' stories evoke larger questions about justice and privacy, power and powerlessness. Lalwani is also very good at subverting perspective. Gradually, boundaries in this novel between inside and outside shift. The notion of freedom is turned on its head. (Guardian)

A thoughtful novel that envelops us in the oppression and beauty of the rural prison, yet resists simplification and stereotypes. Like the documentary process itself, her novel reveals only fragments of its characters - yet each voice is distinct, believable and stubborn in its refusal to be easily known. (Financial Times)

A disturbing exploration of media ethics ... Sharp and uncompromising, it is a ripsnorting read that leaves us wondering where the needle will be pointing at the moment the moral compass is smashed to pieces ... The dissection elevates The Village from an ordinary travel thriller into Joseph Conrad territory, showing lingering post-colonial prejudices and the catastrophic effect of Westerners going East with a specific mission in mind. (The Independent on Sunday)

Extraordinary... Lalwani writes with wonderful clarity and intelligence (Kate Saunders Times)

L'autore:

Nikita Lalwani was born in Rajasthan and raised in Cardiff. Her first novel Gifted was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Desmond Elliott Prize. She lives in London.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Viking
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0670917087
• ISBN 13: 9780670917082
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 256