You searched for book_author:"Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni"
The difficult relationship between power, responsibility, and humility is on full display in The Mistress of Spices, where Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s empathetic and passionate writing merges with magical realism. I loved a lot of the ideas in this book, and the meditative way in which CBD punctuates the narrative with beats on each spice. Yet the execution of the story itself, and the characters, left much to be desired.
Tilo is a young woman…
A moving, sometimes surprising story that examines the fallibility present in all of us as individuals, Before We Visit the Goddess is one of the briefest multi-generational tales I’ve ever tackled. Indeed, initially I was sceptical that Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni could tell three women’s stories in just over 200 pages. Fall On Your Knees, probably my gold standard for multi-generational storytelling, clocks in at twice that length. Yet I had faith in CBD’s writing—I…
Panchaali enters this world through a holy fire, an unwanted boon granted by the gods in addition to her brother, the child destined to kill their father's greatest enemy. She marries the five Pandava brothers, the eldest of whom bets and loses his kingdom to their cousin. After twelve years of exile in the forest, the cousin refuses to return the kingdom, and the Pandavas go to war against the Kauravas. It is a story…