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    An Unrestored Woman
    An Unrestored Woman
    An Unrestored Woman
    Audiobook7 hours

    An Unrestored Woman

    Written by Shobha Rao

    Narrated by Neela Vaswani

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In her mesmerizing debut, Shobha Rao recounts the untold human costs of one of the largest migrations in history.

    1947: the Indian subcontinent is partitioned into two separate countries, India and Pakistan. And with one decree, countless lives are changed forever.

    An Unrestored Woman explores the fault lines in this mass displacement of humanity: a new mother is trapped on the wrong side of the border; a soldier finds the love of his life but is powerless to act on it; an ambitious servant seduces both master and mistress; a young prostitute quietly, inexorably plots revenge on the madam who holds her hostage. Caught in a world of shifting borders, Rao’s characters have reached their tipping points.

    In paired stories that hail from India and Pakistan to the United States, Italy, and England, we witness the ramifications of the violent uprooting of families, the price they pay over generations, and the uncanny relevance these stories have in our world today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateMar 15, 2016
    ISBN9781427275530
    An Unrestored Woman
    Author

    Shobha Rao

    Shobha Rao moved to the U.S. from India at the age of seven. She is the winner of the 2014 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, awarded by Nimrod International Journal. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and is the recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation fellowship. Her story "Kavitha and Mustafa" was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories 2015. She lives in San Francisco. An Unrestored Woman is her debut.

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    Reviews for An Unrestored Woman

    4/5

    37 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A finely written series of heartbreaking stories of the damage done to families, and specifically to women, by the ethnic Partition that created Pakistan. Rao's language is so lovely that I know I will reread this for the sheer music of the words and the vivid pictures she paints, as well as the nuanced tales she tells.
    • 5/5
      Shobha Rao has given us a beautiful collection of 12 subtly interconnected stories that revolve around the Partition of India and Pakistan and the far reaching effects of that event. The book shares its title with the first story. As the author explains, after Partition, the Indian government passed the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act to assist the many women who became victims of the violence between Hindus and Muslims. Here, she has chosen to use the word restored in place of the more commonly used recovered. While woman and children felt the brunt of the conflict, men were not immune, and Rao tells representative stories of a wide variety of persons. An abused child bride, believing her husband has been killed in the burning of a train, experiences a few brief days of peace, love, and freedom. A disgraced British officer, sent to a small, obscure Indian town to serve as lead constable, faces the task of telling his Sikh assistant's wife that she is a widow--and faces secrets of his own. That same man shows up in New York 40 years later as a hotel doorman, a secondary character in the story of a failing marriage and sisterly betrayal. A young man surveying part of the new borderline uses his position in a ploy to wed the young woman he desires--with disastrous consequences. A Hindu teenager, abducted by a brutal Muslim, fears for the safety of the daughter she bears him. A young Hindu woman, grieving a stillborn child and drifting away from her husband, makes a bold move when Muslim raiders board the train they are riding in. A child who survives an attack during Partition violence but hasn't spoken since shows up decades later as the grandfather of a married woman struggled with her own losses. These are not, for the most part, happy stories; they are stories of loss, love, passion, of the struggle against change and the inevitable adjustment to it, and of the perseverance of the human spirit. As one character puts it, the body's will to keep on living overpowers all obstacles. An Unrestored Woman is beautifully written and will take you on an emotional journey that you won't soon forget.
    • 3/5
      This collection helps with the image of what it was like for indian and pakistani men and women of 1947 that you will not read in textbooks or general lectures. These stories are vivid, gut feeling, and felt in our senses of fear and love for the characters lives.
    • 3/5
      A group of short stories revolving around the Partition of Pakistan and India in the 1940's. People were to be "restored" to either the Hindu or their Muslim countries. Women, whose lives were difficult to begin with, were hit especially hard with forced marriages, poverty, sex trade, and lack of understanding. These women were never restored. These stories are depressing in the depiction of the struggle of various women. One character in a story could become the central figure in the next story and so on. It is very well written and probably deserves a higher rating, however, many of the stories left me with a very unanswered feeling. (Read based on review in newspaper)
    • 5/5
      There is much sadness here, but this book is about the struggle, the problems of mixing cultures, universal struggles of women who have lost their place in the world. The initial catalyst for this collection of tales is the hardships imposed upon the peoples of India when governments far away decided to split the peoples into two separate countries: India and Pakistan. Religious intolerance and a pervasive need of men to denigrate females is something that we see globally, and not just among the poor, or refugees, but this collection makes real the problems created in this place and at that time, and reflects the sense of loss and "otherness" which continues to be felt almost 70 years later. You must read this book for yourself.This book was provided by the author or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of Goodreads Giveaways.