Namita Gokhale

Immerse yourself in the rich, layered world of Namita Gokhale, one of India’s most celebrated and versatile literary voices — a novelist, publisher, and cultural impresario who co-founded the Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest free literary festival, and has spent decades championing Indian writing and storytelling in all its diversity. Gokhale’s fiction is distinguished by its extraordinary range, its deep roots in Indian mythology and history, and its unflinching, compassionate exploration of the lives of women across centuries of Indian experience. Her debut novel Paro: Dreams of Passion (1984) was a bold, satirical portrait of Delhi’s social elite that caused a sensation on publication and established her as a major new voice in Indian fiction. Her subsequent works include the luminous historical novel Things to Leave Behind, set in nineteenth-century Kumaon; A Himalayan Love Story; The Book of Shadows; Shakuntala: The Play of Memory; and In Search of Sita, a wide-ranging exploration of the Ramayana’s most beloved heroine. She has also edited numerous anthologies of Indian writing and mythology. Essential reading for lovers of Indian literary fiction, mythology, and the stories of women who refuse to be silenced.