A Slight Angle (India Viking: 2024), the newest novel from Indian writer Ruth Vanita, is a story about love. Difficult love–her six characters are growing up in 1920s India, which takes a dim view of same-sex relationships, and those that transcend religious boundaries. Like Sharad, the jewelry designer who falls in love with his teacher, Abhik–only for the embarrassment to keep them apart for decades.

Ruth Vanita is the author of many books, most recently The Broken Rainbow: Poems and Translations (Copper Coin Publishing: 2023); the novel Memory of Light (Penguin Random House India: 2022); The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species (Oxford University Press: 2022); Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriages in Modern India (Penguin Books India: 2005). She has translated several works from Hindi to English, including Mahadevi Varma’s My Family (Penguin Books India: 2021). She co-edited the path-breaking Same-Sex Love in India, and edited and translated On the Edge: A Hundred Years of Hindi Fiction on Same-Sex Desire (India Viking: 2023).

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of A Slight Angle. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Ruth Vanita, "A Slight Angle" (India Viking, 2024) 33:45 Share

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Ruth Vanita, "A Slight Angle" (India Viking, 2024)