Listening Now - Paperback

by Anjana Appachana (Author)

From the author of Fear and Lovely: "A large book in every sense, a panorama filled with insight and surprise, inviting, absorbing and satisfying." --The Boston Globe

Shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award

In an ordinary New Delhi neighborhood, fatherless twelve-year-old Mallika is full of romantic dreams. Her mother, her mother's friends, her aunt, her grandmother--none of them understand what it means to be passionate, to feel sorrow or excitement, to yearn. Or so she believes.

In truth, these six women have secrets and desires and complicated pasts that Mallika cannot yet comprehend--and their seemingly dull, safe lives are anything but . . .

"An eloquent interweaving of perspectives . . . Appachana succeeds in drawing us deep into this complex vision of shattered happiness and withered dreams." --The New York Times

"Intensely lyrical." --Publishers Weekly

"Appachana can imbue the texture of women's quotidian existence with solidity and substance." --Meenakshi Mukherjee, award-winning author of The Perishable Empire

Praise for Anjana Appachana

"An extremely gifted writer." --Sunday Observer

Author Biography

Anjana Appachana is a novelist and short story author. Her first book, Incantations & Other Stories, was published in 1991. The story in her novel Listening Now continues in her latest book, Fear and Lovely. Her short stories have been included in several anthologies, including Mirrorwork, a collection edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West. Appachana has received an O. Henry Festival Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. She splits her time between the United States and India.