Shashi Deshpande

I Varför just en rödhake? får vi korta, intensiva inblickar i tre olika kvinnors liv. Trots utanförskap och isolering upphör de inte att försöka nå fram till sina närmaste. Deshpande skildrar kvinnorna med ett språk som låter oss komma dem nära och se världen genom deras ögon. Vi blir ett med dem, hör deras tankar som om de var våra egna och blir djupt berörda. Shashi Deshpande (f 1938 i Dharwar, Indien) debuterade som författare i slutet av 1970-talet. Hon har gett ut ett tiotal romaner, flera novellsamlingar och även några barnböcker. Hennes mest kända roman, That Long Silence (1989), tar upp kvinnans ställning i Indien och betraktas som en milstolpe inom landets engelskspråkiga litteratur. Novellerna i Varför just en rödhake? är hämtade ur samlingen The Intrusion and Other Stories (1993).

Guru, an end-stage cancer patient, comes to a quiet medical campus and quickly befriends his hosts friends and neighbours, his warmth and sympathetic manner encouraging them to confide in him. Out of these conversations emerges a name Prabhakar Tambe which spreads a pall of uneasiness over the doctors and triggers a chain of events that leads to catastrophic results. Rumours start to fly, old tensions and rivalries between colleagues and friends re- surface, and every family on the campus is caught in a web of suspicion. Within weeks, two people die in mysterious circumstances and it seems that life will never be the same again for the doctors and their families.

Aclassiccollection of fantastic tales from the author of The Jungle Books, in honor ofhis 150th birthday. Cats and kangaroos, crabs and camels, whales and jaguars, hedgehogs and leopards, magicians and little children, and many other beings are brought to life in an exotic Eastern landscape during the High and Far-Off Times. Drawn from the wondrous tales told to Kipling as a child by his Indian nurses, Just So Stories creates the magical enchantment of the dawn of the world, when animals could talk and think like people. The laziness of the Camel, the curiosity of the Elephant s Child, the cleverness of the Hedgehog, the confusion of the Painted Jaguar, and all the rest of Kipling s delightful menagerie make Just So Stories unforgettable reading for generations to come. With Illustrations by the Author With an Introduction by Avi and an Afterword by Shashi Deshpande"

"There can be no vaulting over time," thinks Urmila, the narrator of Shashi Deshpande's profound and soul-stirring novel. "We have to walk every step of the way, however difficult or painful it is; we can avoid nothing." After the death of her baby, Urmila finds her own path difficult to endure. But through her grief, she is drawn into the lives of two very different women--one her long-dead mother-in-law, a thwarted writer, the other a young woman who lies unconscious in a hospital bed. And it is through these quiet, unexpected connections that Urmi begins her journey toward healing. The miracle of The Binding Vine, and of Shashi Deshpande's deeply compassionate vision, is that out of this web of loss and despair emerge strand of life and hope--a binding vine of love, concern, and connection that spreads across chasms of time, social class, and even death. In moving and exquisitely understated prose, Deshpande renders visible the extraordinary endurance and grace concealed in women's everyday lives.