Usha K.R.

Bibliography



Monkey-man
Penguin India

3 January 2000. It is the start of the new millennium. On Ammanagudi Street in Bangalore, a strange creature is spotted. As the beast seizes the imagination of the city, the first people to sight it—Shrinivas Moorty, a teacher in a local college, Pushpa Rani, who works in a call centre, Neela Mary Gopalrao, secretary to an influential man, and Sukhiya Ram, her office boy—are invited to talk about it on Bali Brums’s hugely popular radio show. What was it that they saw? A bat? A malevolent avatar? A sign of the displeasure of the gods? The grotesque mascot of a city that is growing too fast and crumbling too soon? Or merely a monkey that has lost its way?

Sawnet Review by Nalini Iyer

Review in Kitaab

The price Bangalore pays for its dreams. Review in DNA India

Branching Out. Review in Outlook

A Girl and a River
Penguin India, 2007

Kaveri and Setu grow up in a small town in the state of Mysore, a princely state within British India. It is the 1930s and the distant fire of the freedom movement has begun to warm their languid bones. Setu absorbs their lawyer father Mylaraiah's unquestioning veneration of the British, while Kaveri thinks more like their spirited but reflective mother Rukmini. Mahatma Gandhi visits their town briefly and sets the cat among the pigeons. While Mylaraiah is convinced that 'swaraj' is a delusion, Rukmini questions the bases of their freedom, their political complacency and social presumptions. In an attempt to follow her heart and take charge of her own future, Kaveri defies her father and participates in the Quit India march organised by Shyam, the hot-headed revolutionary she is attracted to. Angered and jealous, and loyal to his father, Setu betrays his sister. Fifty years later, Setu's daughter tries to make sense of her sandpapered childhood, the hostility between her parents and their refusal to speak of the past. Two books and a letter found in a tea tin in the attic lead her to Kaveri and it is Kaveri's murky story that holds the key to her own.

Sawnet Review by Lisa E. J. Lau

Inner ferment. Review in the Hindu.

Written for Indian readers. Kalpish Ratna's review in Outlook.

Shashi Deshpande thinks this book is one of the year's best reads.

A Girl and a River is shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Prize, Asia region.

The Chosen
Penguin India, 2003.

A small-town girl, Nagaratna, moves into a lower-middle-class life in a burgeoning metropolis. She takes up a job in an ashram school.

An oasis among mirages. Deccan Herald review, 9 Mar 2003.

Choosing a life and a lingo. The Hindu, 13 Mar 2003.

Journeying in Wide Open Spaces. Interview in the Deccan Herald, March 2003.

Sojourn
Manas Press, Mumbai, 1998.

South Asian Women authors
Sawnet Bookshelf
Sawnet